Biglaw

Former Jones Day Partner Found Guilty On Criminal Contempt Charges

He faces up to two years in prison.

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Jones DayFacing a court order to produce documents, a (now former) Jones Day partner told his client to “burn” an internal messaging app (3XC). Why would a Biglaw partner tell anyone to do something that seemingly contravenes every principle of litigation? He says it’s because he said some stuff of the app that could be embarrassing to his wife… who just happens to be a politician.

Raymond McKeeve, a private equity specialist and the former Jones Day partner in question, advised Jonathan Faiman, founder of online grocer Ocado, while developing a rival grocer, Today Development Partners, with another ex-Ocado employee, Jon Hillary. They used the aforementioned 3XC to communicate. But Ocado sued McKeeve’s client and, after a search order had been issued that would ostensibly include messages on the app, McKeeve contacted the head of IT and told him to “burn” the app.

And when McKeeve gave a reason for the bold destruction instruction, he pointed to his wife. As reported by Roll On Friday:

McKeeve testified that he only sent the order to prevent exposure of his wife, Belinda de Lucy. Hillary had used her name as a pseudonym in the app, which was “a source of some annoyance to me, for a number of reasons”, said McKeeve. By the time of the search order, she had been elected as an MEP for the Brexit Party.

“I had been not a particularly supportive husband in the build-up to her election and found some of her campaigning irritating and thought it was a waste of time”, said McKeeve. “Then, when she was elected, I think to her’s and a lot of people’s surprise, the media attention to everyone in and around the Brexit Party dialled up significantly. It was really vitriolic”.

Given the destruction order, you’re probably not surprised Ocado’s attorneys weren’t given the heads-up about the app, but McKeeve also failed to mention it to his partners at Jones Day:

Neither McKeeve nor the TDP team initially mentioned the existence of the app to Ocado’s lawyers, Mishcon de Reya, or to anyone else at Jones Day. When [the IT professional] referred to the app in a conversation with a Jones Day lawyer a few days later, litigation partner Sion Richards immediately contacted McKeeve, who was at Wimbledon, and got him to come back to the office. Richards was “really angry”, said McKeeve. Jones Day then came clean to Mischon about 3XC’s existence.

Now that he’s been found in criminal contempt of court — and faces a possible prison sentence — McKeeve says he’s horrified at what’s he’s done:

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“The idea that I would have committed a contempt of anything just horrifies me”, he said. “The immediate response was, somebody is handing over a phone, that phone has an app that has my wife’s name on it, get rid of it. It was that simple and that stupid”.

And the judge seemed to have little sympathy for McKeeve:

The judge rejected McKeeve’s claim that he did not know the search order encompassed the app, ruling that it was in fact “the very source of his concern and the inspiration of his stated motive to protect his wife”. He said McKeeve was “unduly defensive and unwilling to accept the obvious”, perhaps because of his “genuine sense of shame and embarrassment”.

McKeeve’s intention to undermine the search order was not “trivial or technical”, but “serious and adverse”. It represented a “wilful intention to interfere with the due administration of justice” which, “sadly”, crossed the threshold of criminal contempt, said the judge. McKeeve now faces the prospect of a fine and up to two years in prison.

All of which proves the lesson of Richard Nixon: the cover-up is worse than the crime. Because talking shit about your wife doesn’t carry a potential jail sentence.

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).

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