Associate Who Claimed Drugging at Bingham Party Sees Complaint Tossed
A Massachusetts agency has tossed a complaint by a former associate who claimed Bingham McCutchen didn’t do enough to investigate her claim of a drugging at a law firm holiday party.
The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination said former associate Michelle Moor failed to prove the working conditions at Bingham were so intolerable that she was forced to resign, the National Law Journal reports. Nor did she prove an adverse employment action because Bingham investigated and fired an employee who bragged a month later that he liked to give a date rape drug to women before having sex with them, the commission said. The employee was terminated within four weeks of Moor’s complaint.
Moor alleged she learned of her drugging when she felt dazed after a Bingham Christmas party in 2007 and sought emergency room treatment. She learned her blood contained Tegretol, an antiseizure medication that can cause memory loss when mixed with alcohol.
Moor says another associate later confided that she had been drugged and raped by a firm employee about a year earlier after another Bingham social event. When Moor reported the employee who bragged about giving women a date rape drug, the law firm offered to move her to another floor so she did not have to work near him, according to the complaint. Moor said this offer was inadequate because she would have been moved away from other litigators.
She resigned in February 2008 and accepted a job with a smaller Boston firm, Kotin, Crabtree & Strong.
Moor’s lawyer, Rachel Stroup of Zalkind, Rodriguez, Lunt & Duncan in Boston, told the NLJ she plans to pursue a lawsuit in the case.
