Judge Sanctions Law Firm $15K for Allowing Job Bias Client to Hide New Employment
A federal judge in Manhattan is requiring a law firm to pay $15,000 for allowing a client suing her employer for discrimination to hide that she had accepted a new job offer.
U.S. District Judge William Pauley said the law firm Thompson Wigdor & Gilly harmed “the judicial process itself” when its lawyers allowed the false testimony at a deposition, the New York Law Journal reports. The client was herself fined $2,500 for testifying that she didn’t hear back about a job opening, when in reality she had accepted the position about two weeks before.
Lawyer Kenneth Thompson of Thompson Wigdor told the judge in a hearing on May 20 that mistakes were made, but they weren’t intentional.
Thompson Wigdor had better results in a separate case this week, when a New York appeals court said the firm had no liability in a suit claiming it used topless photos as negotiating leverage for a sexual harassment client.
