Judge John Koeltl

Does Ropes & Gray Hate the Old and Gray?

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Patricia A. Martone

“You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away — a man is not a piece of fruit.”

– Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (affiliate link)

Take this famous line and replace “man” with “law firm partner,” and you’ve captured the gist of the lawsuit against Ropes & Gray brought by Patricia Martone, who alleges age and sex discrimination by her former firm. (Martone, a former IP litigation partner at Ropes, is now a Morrison & Foerster partner.)

When I broke the news of this lawsuit back in 2011, I expected a speedy settlement. Would Ropes really want to go toe to toe with a pair of high-powered litigatrices, namely, Martone and her formidable employment lawyer, Anne Vladeck?

But here we are, two years later, and the battle rages on. Ropes has hired a third leading litigatrix to defend itself. Let’s learn the latest news….

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Billionaire Is SOL Because Of The SOL When It Comes to Thomas Jefferson’s Wine

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It must be every billionaire wine connoisseur’s dream to own a few bottles from the cellars of the man who drafted the Declaration of Independence. The taste of the prestige must be simply delightful. But after paying $311,804 for four bottles of wine that may have been counterfeit, even the richest of men would probably be left with the awful taste of sour grapes.

This is what allegedly happened to William Koch, brother to the controversially conservative Charles and David Koch, when he discovered that the wine he purchased from Thomas Jefferson’s cache in France may have been bogus. Because when you’re worth $4 billion, it must be embarrassing to file suit over a mere pittance. But that’s exactly what this wine aficionado did; no one fools a Koch brother and gets away with it.

Alas, it seems that Koch’s claim aged more like milk than fine wine, and the Second Circuit had the unfortunate task of telling him….

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