Sexual Harassment

Bail For Famous European Charged With Sex Crime? Fool Me Once, Shame On You…

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If you’re like me, two of your last three Sunday night sports orgies have been ruined by the intrusion of real world events. First, Osama bin Laden lost the ultimate game of Call of Duty. Then last night Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund and would-be president of France, was pulled off of a plane at JFK and arrested for a sex crime. And in the middle of those two world events, Mother’s Day happened.

(Note to NFL owners: this is the kind of crap that’ll be happening in the fall if you guys refuse to let people play football.)

As world events go, this is pretty big. Think about it: we’ve got the head of one of the five most powerful NGOs in the world, the leader of the Socialist party, a sex scandal, a super-fancy hotel, a maid, and an alleged escape attempt thwarted at JFK — and this has nothing to do with Bill Clinton! I mean come on, if you found out that the Lannisters were involved, would you be surprised?

And on the legal front, we’re talking about an important and respected international figure who just got denied bail.

Excuse me, I need to get my popcorn out of the microwave….

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Booty-Dancing Toronto Partner: ‘I Was Falsely Accused’

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Toronto partner David Cowling, exonerated booty dancer.

Toronto partner David Cowling, exonerated booty dancer

Back in January 2009, a moot court after-party hosted by Mathews, Dinsdale & Clarke got wild enough to spark allegations of sexual harassment. Canadians do know how to party, eh? The “night of debauchery” has haunted David Cowling ever since; he was one of the partners accused of getting overly friendly with female associates and law students, while gettin’ jiggy.

He says that an internal law firm investigation cleared him of charges of inappropriate dance floor behavior, but that the firm refused to make that public, leading to rumors continuing to swirl in his work and social communities in Toronto. Oh, and have we mentioned that David Cowling specializes in labor and employment law? “If I were a personal injury lawyer, sexual harassment rumors would not be such a bad mark on my professional reputation,” says Cowling.

So he filed a libel suit against Adrian Jakibchuk and Sarah Diebel, the two associates who accused him of doing the really funky chicken on the dance floor. Apparently, they don’t study the Barbara Streisand effect in Canadian law schools. That got the allegations splashed across Canadian newspapers and here at ATL.

But now he’s got his name cleared, with a public statement from his prior firm, along with a seven-figurish settlement. He started a new firm and dropped his lawsuit against his accusers, and has a few things to say about his side of the story.

So say you’re the law student who supposedly got felt up by a partner on the dance floor, and his lawyer calls you up in the middle of exam week to talk about it. Yeah, that’s awkward. And Cowling sent along the transcript…

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Victim of Sexual Assault Tries To Drag Match.com Down A Slippery Slope

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Would new Match.com regulations stop Ben Roethlisberger from connecting with a receiver?

By now, many of you have see the story about the woman who is suing Match.com. It’s been in the L.A. Times, the WSJ Law Blog (replete with a very creepy picture), and the ABA Journal. It’s a sad story. A woman alleges she was sexually assaulted while on a date with a man she met through Match.com.

If the allegations are true, you can only hope her attacker is punished to the full extent of the law.

This story is making national news because, in addition to pursuing charges against her alleged attacker, the woman has also filed a lawsuit against Match.com. She wants them to conduct a screening of the users on their site.

In the heat of a disturbing story about an assault, I’m sure that checking a member’s name against a registry of sex offenders seems like a minimal requirement that can be easily done by a large company like Match.com. At least that’s what her lawyer would like us to think.

But I think any dispassionate and reasonable analysis of the situation would reveal that such a requirement is at worst dangerous, and a best entirely ineffective. I don’t care how many proprietary algorithms these dating sites throw at you — at the end of the day, there is no substitute for human intuition, common sense, and luck….

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Quote of the Day: A racy novel? No, just a Canadian law firm party.

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[Partner David] Cowling and the very intoxicated summer student began to dance in a sexually explicit manner. The student’s arms were around Cowling’s neck and his hands were on her waist and buttocks. While dancing, Cowling placed his hand on the student’s breast. Shortly thereafter, the summer student fell to the floor. She was assisted to her feet by Cowling and others. The summer student then went to the washroom where she vomited over her hair, body and clothes

– Canadian lawyer Sarah Diebel, in the statement of defense she filed in opposition to a defamation lawsuit by David Cowling, a former partner at the Canadian law firm of Mathews Dinsdale & Clarke.

(Cowling sued Diebel and another former associate, Adrian Jakibchuk, for defamation, alleging that their statements about a wild party in January 2009 defamed him. We covered Cowling’s defamation lawsuit here. Earlier this week, Jakibchuk sued Mathews Dinsdale for wrongful termination, bringing the firm’s “night of debauchery” back into the news.)

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Husband of Porn-Posing Canadian Judge Pleads Guilty

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Madam Justice Lori Douglas, clothed.

It’s been a while since we last checked in on Madam Justice A. Lori Douglas, the Canadian jurist featured in pornographic photos that found their way to the internet. Today we have an update.

The update relates to Justice Douglas’s husband, Jack King — the Canada lawyer responsible for posting the pictures of his wife engaging in bondage, playing with sex toys and administering fellatio, among other activities….

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Non-Sequiturs: 03.10.11

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* Howrey’d come to this? Robert Ruyak’s ruminations on his law firm’s fall. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Speaking of Howrey, it’s only the latest of several major law firms to go from Am Law 100 status to dissolution. Take a swim in the Biglaw Dead Pool. [Law Shucks]

* Dov Charney, CEO of American Apparel, has been hit with his biggest sexual harassment lawsuit ever — one seeking $250 million in damages. [Gawker]

* Bess Levin on the Raj Rajaratnam trial: “People helping people is all this is about.” [Dealbreaker]

Raj Rajaratnam

* “How Ohio State Athletics Flunked the Bar Exam.” Or: I’m going to wait until Elie returns from vacation before tackling sports stories. [Off Tackle Empire]

* Speaking of Elie, we already know his answer to the question posed by Francis G.X. Pileggi: “Does Delaware need another law school?” [Delaware Corporate and Commercial Litigation Blog]

* Here’s a sports-related story I can understand. This fact pattern, dubbed the case of the “wayward weiner” or the “fateful frank,” belongs on a torts final exam. [ABA Journal]

* Professorial catfights can be so much fun. Watch Professor Stephen Bainbridge go after Professor Brad DeLong. [Professor Bainbridge]

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Police Tell Female Law Students ‘Don’t Dress Like a Slut’ To Avoid Sexual Assault

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Canadian police might not know the difference between law students, Kim Cattrall, and victims of sexual assault.

Sigh.

You know, I kind of get what this police officer was trying to say. When speaking in front of a group of law students at Osgoode Hall Law School, a Toronto cop told women they could avoid sexual harassment and assault by not dressing like sluts.

As a black person, I’ve heard similar things. If you don’t want to get racially profiled, “don’t dress like a gangbanger” and all that. And that kind of advice is true to some extent. It’s not “fair,” but you have to be aware of how you present yourself.

The thing is, what kind of idiot white male cop thinks that female law students don’t already know this? I think women at a law school in Canada know damn well that they can’t walk around campus dressed only in a bra and hot pants. They should be able to walk around in whatever the hell they like without being sexually assaulted, but they know how the world works.

When did dress sense become a safety tip?

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Aggrieved Women Potpourri: Sexual Harassment Canada-Style, and the Return of Charlene Morisseau

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Jaime Laskis

I’m not trying to compare the claims of Jaime Laskis, a former associate at the prominent Canadian law firm of Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt, with those of Charlene Morisseau (a legendary Lawyer of the Day honoree, from 2007). But we’ve got two stories vaguely related to alleged employee harassment and discrimination in the legal profession, and I wanted to click them both off so I have something to change the subject with when Sweet Hot Justice asks me if she’s a cougar when we meet for drinks tonight.

Let’s start with Jaime Laskis’s story, which is a bit more newsy. Laskis was an associate in the New York office of Toronto-based Osler, who claims she suffered various forms of sexual harassment while she worked there. One partner allegedly said that Harvard University was full of “pretty women pretending to get an education.”

I know, I know, that’s sounds like a man who has never been to a Harvard party. But Laskis makes other allegations….

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Madam Justice Lori Douglas: Underneath Her Robe

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Madam Justice A. Lori Douglas - with her clothes ON.

We’ve been covering the salacious tale of Madam Justice A. Lori Douglas, a Canadian judge, for several months now. Justice Douglas — associate chief justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Manitoba, and a member of the Canadian Judicial Council — is currently the subject of an ethics investigation. As mentioned earlier, “naked photographs of [Justice Douglas] engaging in bondage, playing with sex toys and performing oral sex were previously posted on the internet.”

Our stories on Justice Douglas, collected here, have been quite popular. They have generated strong traffic. But some readers had the predictable reaction of TTIWWOP — “This Thread Is Worthless Without Pictures.”

Well, now we have the pictures….

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Protip: Do Not Buy A Vibrator For Any Lady At Your Office

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Here are some instructions.

Valentine’s Day is coming up. Married men are looking forward to their annual opportunity to have oral sex (don’t act like I’m the only one). Single guys are wondering what kind of depressed and ovulating women will show up at their local bar, alone. And ladies are just hoping for something that will turn all of their girlfriends into jealous bitches. As always, the day promises to be a massacre.

But regardless of your Valentine’s Day motives, please note that there are some intimate gifts that are inappropriate in all situations: gifts like vibrators. Not as a Valentine’s Day present, not as a Christmas present, not as a birthday present. Women can’t show it off to their friends, and it works against you as a sexually suggestive gift. Vibrators should only be given to women you’ve already had sex with, preferably right before the first Thursday of the NCAA tournament so they have something to do with themselves.

Sadly, a New York man was not familiar with this rule, and he bought one of his co-workers a vibrator for her birthday. He was her boss. Now, he’s getting sued — because that’s what happens when you are the idiot who buys a vibrator for a woman you work with…

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