Peter Moselle Kaufman

Peter Kaufman

One of the more frustrating aspects of being a plaintiffs' lawyer is that, often times, when a client has a good case, the recovery in that case is unable to be fully realized, not only because the defendant refuses to admit and accept liability, but also because the client/plaintiff's life circumstances make litigating unreasonable and undesirable. This was the dynamic in your case. You indeed had a meritorious defamation case against a defendant employer that involved salacious facts of certain married, C-Suite members sleeping with other married employees, and you claimed to have proof of the same. The reason lawyers ask for information to be repeated throughout the course of representation is because we want to ensure the client is telling us the truth and that their story hasn't changed. To your credit, your story didn't change; yet with each encounter I had with your former employer, I needed to reiterate those facts to them. Remember we were dealing with an employer that refused to hire outside counsel and instead opted to play "Google Lawyers" themselves. When you're dealing with morons, sometimes you have to get down on their level and give them the "dumbed-down" version, as opposed to the cogent, legal arguments lawyers normally have with each other. I fought like hell for you with your former employer for roughly one year in multiple attempts to get them to offer you a pre-litigation settlement; yet when we'd come to the point of needing to file suit in order to get them to act, you and I, collectively, decided it was unwise to do so. Within one month after your wrongful termination from your former employer, you were fortunate to have gotten another job making even more money than you had made with the defendant employer. This normally limits damages in employment cases; although your case hinged much more on defamation, which made your chances at a good recovery more favorable. When faced with the potential for a high-dollar settlement or jury verdict, some lawyers will put the monetary interest above the personal interests of the client. I am not that type of lawyer. An ethical lawyer will ALWAYS put his/her client's interests first, above all else. That is what I did for you; it is what I do for all clients. Before severing our lawyer/client relationship, you and I had several conversations about what litigation would look like, practically speaking. We would have filed suit in South Carolina, although you were/are living in another state. This would have made litigation expensive and cumbersome for you, and your current employer would have ultimately learned of the lawsuit against your former employer. You didn't want to upset the applecart, and I agreed that wasn't in your best interests. Also, based upon the very nature of your primary claim, i.e., defamation, there is a lot of information that gets to "come in," from an evidentiary standpoint, that, in most other claims, would normally be excluded. This meant an assault on your character, as well as the defendants' could have been admitted, which, again, wouldn't have been in your best interests. Perhaps most significantly, you and I discussed the impacts litigation would have had on your family. You have young children to consider, and we didn't want them to be exposed to the accusations made against their mother in a public lawsuit. Plus, pragmatically, the rigors of them dealing with you being away during the pendency of litigation would have been incredibly difficult. So you see, as to your assertion that your, "name was dragged through the mud for nothing," to the contrary. At all times when you and I weighed the pros & cons of filing suit, one of the chief considerations - for you and your family - was whether or not "dragging your name through the mud" was worth it. In the end, we agreed it wasn't, and I sent you a customary "Disengagement/Close" letter, signifying the conclusion of representation.