Litigators

Well, This Lawsuit Between Two Harvard Law Grads Is Proceeding In The Most HLS Way Possible

A nasty employment dispute involving one of the fastest growing law firms.

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Look, I’m not going to lie, the Harvard Law alumni network is strong. It’s probably the best thing about going to Harvard Law School, other than the [redacted :)].

That network is how John Pierce, managing partner of the litigation boutique Pierce Bainbridge, and Don Lewis (an HLS grad and former Skadden Associate) hooked up. Pierce and Lewis overlapped in law school, and as Pierce grew his firm and Lewis was looking for a partnership opportunity, the match made sense.

That match has now erupted into some nasty litigation. On its surface, it’s just like any other wrongful termination case. But as Am Law explains, the allegations being thrown around by both parties are quite damaging:

Lewis accused Pierce Bainbridge, its global managing partner John Pierce and other partners and staff of stiffing creditors, inflating the merits of potential cases to trick clients and litigation financiers, and firing him after a sham investigation. Lewis’ complaint quotes emails, texts and Slack messages that he said exonerate him and show misconduct by his former colleagues.

In its own suit, Pierce Bainbridge asserts that Lewis was put on leave last year following a staffer’s accusation that Lewis grabbed her breasts after she saw him masturbating in a glass-walled office. The firm said Lewis was fired after he violated the terms of his leave by sending a “mass email” to partners that named his accuser and disparaged the people and work of the firm.

These guys were classmates. You’re not supposed to fight your classmates like this until one of them is nominated to the Supreme Court.

The allegations leveled by both side (which you can read here, because Pierce Bainbridge actually attached Lewis’s original complaint to their counter suit), are shocking. Lewis alleges that, essentially in order to obtain litigation financing in the early days, the firm inflated the potential value of cases in order to defraud investors. He also alleges various discriminatory behavior, and basically puts Pierce Bainbridge’s entire Slack channel on blast. (Ed note: See, colleagues, this is why I don’t like to use Slack.) Pierce Bainbridge denies these allegations and points to the fact that their investors have not joined this lawsuit and are on good terms with the firm.

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Pierce Bainbridge’s counter-suit alleges that this is all a defamatory shakedown from a disgruntled employee who was fired for masturbating in his office and groping an assistant. Lewis denies these allegations and claims they are part of the firm’s attempts to silence him after he uncovered fraudulent behavior.

If you are familiar enough with employment and wrongful termination disputes, what strikes you is that usually this is the kind of thing that gets settled long before public litigation. Even assuming one of these parties is straight wrong, nobody wants to see allegations like this. Pierce Bainbridge doesn’t want to scare off potential investors, Don Lewis doesn’t want to be unhireable. The whole point of money is to solve issues like this, right?

We reached out to both parties as to why this case didn’t settle before anybody knew about it.

According to Lewis’s attorneys, mediation was discussed. Lewis’s side had two requirements: the mediation be done by May, and that mediation start with a commitment to settle for “at least seven figures.” The date was not a problem, and according to Lewis’s team the seven-figure starting offer was considered. But the firm could not agree to mediation by the deadline, so Lewis’s team filed. After the filing, Lewis’s team claim the counsel for Pierce Bainbridge asked them to “un-file” the complaint because the seven-figure starting offer was still being discussed. Lewis’s attorneys say they told the court that the initial complaint had been filed “in error” and pulled it back. But Pierce Bainbridge decided to file their counter-suit instead of mediating the claim on Lewis’s terms.

According to representatives from Pierce Bainbridge, they viewed the entire complaint as a shakedown. Here’s a statement from John Pierce:

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Lewis’s lawyer sent a draft of his complaint to the firm in March. The document was filled with pages and pages of manufactured allegations that have nothing to do with his supposed underlying claims, and were included only for the purpose of threatening to embarrass the firm. The complaint demanded $65 million in damages, and Lewis demanded several million dollars in exchange for not filing it. That’s extortion. We participated in early-stage talks with his attorney in an effort to settle for nuisance value, which would avoid the distraction that Lewis is now trying to cause. But when it became clear that he was not engaging in good faith — and in fact had already filed the complaint publicly — we moved forward with filing our own complaint.

I can’t help but wonder if these guys had gone to Yale if they would have ended up on somebody’s yacht, or spaceplane, and hammered out their differences. The suit, counter-suit, I’ll burn your house down, I’ll cut your head off, I don’t need a head to strangle you, style is giving me PTSD from my time at Harvard.

The complaints are good reading though. HLS knows how to train ’em.

Pierce Bainbridge, Ex-Partner Trade Toxic Allegations of Extortion, Misconduct [American Lawyer]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.

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