The Inbox, Only Ten Shopping Days Left Edition

Sometimes—but only sometimes, and certainly not all the time – we lawyers can be just a little uptight and get into nasty disputes with each other.  Not that we at S-by-S have any firsthand knowledge of that.  But we are intrigued by this mushrooming case filed in Pennsylvania by Jeffrey First, a former contract attorney with the legal staffing firm of Special Counsel.  First started off by suing two colleagues who he claimed had hacked into his bank account and email.  Then, he says, the staffing company retaliated against him and “constructively discharged” him – so he’s suing it in a separate action.  He’s also suing a partner in the firm, Pepper Hamilton, that had hired him as part of a Special Counsel team. 

Speaking of lawyers, here’s a hint for any in-house counsel out there: it’s not a good idea to steal $9 million from your employer, like this in-house lawyer did by using phony invoices from phony law firms that he set up with his wife.  Come to think of it, that’s good advice for any executive. 

Naughty, and not nice: Fry’s Electronics, a West Coast chain, is to pay the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission $2.3 million to settle a case stemming from a male manager’s sexually inappropriate texts to a female subordinate, and repeated requests that she join him for a drink.  Elevating the amount of the settlement, according to this report, is Fry’s scorched-earth litigation tactics.     EEOC settlements seem to make a frequent appearance in The Inbox; prior ones are here, here and here.   

And from the “Uh, Thanks, I Guess” Department, defense contractor Lockheed Martin says it “won’t ask the Pentagon to reimburse part of the $3.5 million it is paying the chief operating officer who left last month after it was disclosed he had an extramarital affair with a subordinate.”  Diligent colleague Andrew Torrez wrote about the case of Lockheed COO Christopher Kubasik here.  Presumably, Andrew will not be asking the Pentagon to reimburse him for his time to write about the Lockheed Martin COO leaving Lockheed Martin, either.  But, we’ll see.          

• The Inbox