A former Chadbourne & Parke partner has alleged that Norton Rose Fulbright asked Chadbourne to fire her before it completed their merger. She also claims that Chadbourne's head of litigation taped degrading cartoons to her office door after everyone had left the office.

Kerrie Campbell moved to Chadbourne in 2014 as a lateral partner after "bumping into conflict" at her previous firm. In 2016 she sued Chadbourne for $100 million for sex discrimination, claiming that the firm routinely underpaid women. She was subsequently sacked, but two other former partners, one of whom is still employed by Norton Rose Fulbright as counsel, joined her complaint.

After receiving permission from federal court to add Norton Rose Fulbright as a defendant, the three women filed an amended version of their complaint on 2 August. It alleges that Norton Rose Fulbright "instructed" Chadbourne to "formally expel" Campbell prior to the completion of the merger, and in doing so "aided and abetted Chadbourne’s discriminatory, retaliatory, and otherwise unlawful conduct".

The complaint also implicates Chadbourne's head of litigation, Abbe Lowell, in a bizarre episode. It states that Campbell arrived at her office one morning to discover that someone had "anonymously torn down" a postcard she had taped next to her door which "contained the eloquent words of the legendary social justice leader Nelson Mandela". Video footage allegedly shows that the culprit was Lowell, who is now NRF's US co-head of regulations, investigations, securities and compliance. According to the complaint, Lowell can be seen removing the postcard and taping a "piece of paper with a large smiley face graphic" in its place "in an attempt to make a mockery of Mandela’s words".

 
Making a mockery of Mandela: how it might have looked.

Lowell then returned, according to the complaint, and taped "a cartoon figure of a fat man in a bowler hat alongside the smiley face". Lowell "then returned to Campbell’s office and removed both the cartoon image of the fat man and the smiley face graphic". He "returned to Campbell’s office for a third time, the video shows, apparently to remove tape he had left behind on Campbell’s office wall". Whether true or not, as RollOnFriday has previously noted: big bag of crazy.

Norton Rose Fulbright did not respond to requests for comment.
Tip Off ROF

Comments