Well-Known Law Firm and Ex-Employee Argue About Whose Internal Email Insults Were the Worst
A well-known criminal defense firm in downtown Toronto and a former assistant to its managing partner are slugging it out in an ongoing Canadian wrongful termination case, arguing about which side allegedly made the rudest and crudest comments, or otherwise engaged in inappropriate behavior.
In a statement of defense responding to plaintiff Tracy Francis’ claim that she was fired without cause, Rusonik O’Connor Ross Gorham & Angelini says her “persistent, vexatious, offensive and discriminatory” email about one of the firm’s lawyers was reason enough, reports the Star.
She allegedly called the man, a tyrant, an idiot, a weasel and a dump truck, among other objectionable descriptives, according to the pleading. (A “dump truck,” explains the newspaper, is a term for attorneys who plead out their clients instead of litigating their cases.) She also is accused of criticizing the lawyer’s physical appearance and saying in an email “he wouldn’t know fairness if it came up and smacked him in that ugly mug.”
However, the 37-year-old Francis says in another filing that it was part of the hard-charging firm’s culture to make disparaging remarks about others in internal email. Among the examples she cites that are printable, one lawyer allegedly said a prosecutor looked like “a baby lizard on crack” and another allegedly said, regarding a judge, that the zoo was aware he had escaped.
Managing partner Reid Rusonik tells the newspaper that he is limited in what he can discuss concerning an ongoing dispute. However, he said the emails at issue were intended only for internal law firm communication and had been taken out of context.
“They were either written under the stress of day-to-day litigation by colleagues who occasionally used the forum as a shared means of blowing off steam or they were written in a jestful, teasing manner between friends,” he told the Star.
Given the potential for misunderstanding, however, the firm changed its policy at some point during the past few years and now discourages such emails, according to Rusonik.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Judge’s Holiday-Weekend Civility Class is Cancelled, But Attorney Manners Remain a Contentious Topic”
