Paralegals & Legal Secretaries

1.5 Million Reasons to Resist Office Romance

By Lynne DeVenny

I'm getting ready to share highlights from one of the biggest cautionary tales of them all, while at the same time illustrating how juries can turn on you in a skinny minute (which is why legal professionals should never guarantee their clients the outcome of a jury trial).

The Honeymoon Phase

Imagine a cute paralegal (let's cast Lindsay just for fun since she's in rehab and won't see this) and her ruggedly handsome, although slightly rotund supervising attorney (let's cast Vince D'Onofrio since I did not mind those extra pounds in his last season on Law & Order: Criminal Intent ONE BIT. Hey, Vince, I MISS YOU! ooooops I digress...) in an office romance which started over legal briefs and ended up with Calvin Klein briefs (and caution) being thrown to the winds.

Lindsay the paralegal and that sexy (ooops) Vince the supervising attorney are wild for each other. They exchange text messages that would make Kwame Kilpatrick and Christine Beatty blush. Overly secure in his love, she shops online during office hours.

The Honeymoon's Over

But then the bloom fades (possibly from too much time spent together during working hours), and reality rears its warty head. Suddenly, she starts nagging him about those love handles she used to adore. Inexplicably, he gets tired of scheduling his own depositions and expects her to generate some actual work during office hours.

Let's assume there is an appropriately nasty break-up, but nobody quits. Then, in a typical he said, she said scenario, she is either fired for refusing to continue a sexual relationship with him, or she gives some serious attitude when he points out a mistake in her work and stomps out the door, never to shop online at his law firm again.

Lindsay takes this hot mess public, and smacks a sexual harassment and wrongful termination lawsuit on Vince. Vince is ticked off enough to take Lindsay's depositions himself, even though he's represented by counsel. The legal experts fear that the jury may sympathize with sweet little Lindsay, because the big ol' mean attorney rendered her so speechless during her depositions that she couldn't remember one thing he'd done to offend her.

That Was One Expensive Honeymoon

But the verdict is returned, and it's clear that the jury hates them some Lindsay (which is why she's so well cast in this role). Not only do they not find Vince guilty of a durn thing, but they find Lindsay acted with malice and award Vince over $1.55 MILLION DOLLARS for his defamation countersuit in which he described his former girlfriend as a sexual predator. (Those remarks about his weight must've really stung.) This verdict does not include potential punitive damages, which the jury is still mulling over.

OVER $1.5 MILLION DOLLARS, PEOPLE.

Lindsay is going to have to star in a lot of movies about porn stars to pay that judgment.

Seriously, this really happened in Alameda County, California, but I don't want "Lindsay" to find this post in a Google search. (I'm too lazy to respond to hate email, although I count myself lucky to have only pissed off two or three people that I know of, in almost two years of sharing cautionary tales.)

What have we learned from the sad and startling law office romance of Lindsay and Vince?

• In love and war, text messages are FOREVER. They can land you in a hot digital mess. Do NOT document office romances electronically (or on social media sites).
• If you start to think your big-boned supervising attorney is a conveniently accessible hottie, go home, take a cold shower and watch some old Law & Order: Criminal Intent episodes. If that doesn't work, find another job, or at least another supervising attorney, before you risk your paycheck and health insurance benefits for a relationship that might have the life expectancy of a Bachelor engagement.
• If any of the evidence makes you look like the sexual predator, don't put all your eggs in the hands of 12 jurors, unless you have $1.5 million of 'em to spare.

Sources: Law.com; ABA Journal

Full post as published by Practical Paralegalism on August 04, 2010 (boomark / email).