High-Profile Skadden Litigator Goofs, Sends Private E-mail to Reporters
Updated: Well-known litigator Sheila Birnbaum of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom believed Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood used a press release and newspaper column to mischaracterize a recent confidential settlement with her client State Farm, and she said so.
Her opinion was intended to circulate in an internal e-mail, but instead she sent it to more than a dozen reporters, the Associated Press reports.
“This is so over the top,” she wrote in the e-mail. “Can we ask that he be held in contempt of court for misrepresenting a settlement agreement and order of the court?”
The settled suit involved allegations that Hood had violated an agreement to drop his criminal investigation of the insurer’s handling of claims involving Hurricane Katrina. Terms of the settlement earlier this month were not disclosed. But Hood recently said in a newspaper column that State Farm’s allegations “were shown to be false” and then made the same assertion in a press release.
Birnbaum told AP she was embarrassed by the goof. “I’m embarrassed that I pressed the wrong button,” she said. “That e-mail shouldn’t have gone out.”
Lawyers, you may want to consider deleting reporters’ names from your e-mail address book. Birnbaum’s misdirected e-mail is the second by a lawyer to make headlines this month. A lawyer at Pepper Hamilton in Philadelphia reportedly sent an e-mail referencing settlement negotiations that apparently involved Eli Lilly & Co. to New York Times reporter Alex Berenson. The message was intended to reach co-counsel Bradford Berenson of Sidley Austin.
A hat tip to the Wall Street Journal Law Blog, which posted the story.
Updated at 7:45 a.m. to include a reference to the Pepper Hamilton misdirected e-mail incident.
