The New York Appellate Division for the First Judicial Department modified a ruling of the Supreme Court in a dispute among attorneys
Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Paul A. Goetz, J.), entered October 30, 2018, which, to the extent appealed from as limited by the briefs, denied defendants Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik, LLP, Worby Groner Edelman & Napoli Bern, LLP, and Napoli Bern & Associates, LLP’s motion for summary judgment on their counterclaim against plaintiff for breach of an employment agreement entitling them to liquidated damages, and granted defendants’ motion for summary judgment dismissing plaintiff’s second cause of action for breach of contract regarding an unpaid bonus, unanimously modified, on the law, to the extent of reinstating plaintiff’s second cause of action, and otherwise affirmed, without costs.
The law firm defendants established as a matter of law that plaintiff violated the confidentiality provision of her employment agreement when she filed four confidential documents – three email chains discussing client and law firm business issues and a written audit report of the firms’ policies and procedures prepared by another law firm – on NYSCEF (New York State Courts Electronic Filing), making them publicly available. At the time of the filing, plaintiff was an attorney licensed in New York and was represented by counsel. Accordingly, under the circumstances, her actions qualified as “knowing[], intentional[] or willful[]” and triggered the liquidated damages provision of her employment agreement. However, on this record, defendants did not make a prima facie showing of entitlement to those damages.
…defendants did not identify to the motion court any damages that they sustained as a result of plaintiff’s breach of the agreement.
The Telegraph reported on unrelated drama involving attorneys at the defendant firm
It is one of New York’s most successful law firms, a company whose attorneys have won $3 billion in payouts for sick Ground Zero workers, diet pill users and asbestos cancer sufferers.
But Napoli Bern Ripka Shkolnik is now at the centre of its own extraordinary courtroom drama over a power struggle within the firm’s Empire State building headquarters between two founding partners, a tawdry office affair and a scorned wife.
A former young female lawyer at the office has contended that Paul Napoli, one of the founding partners, conducted an 18-month affair with her and that his wife Marie has since engaged in a campaign of harassment, threats and stalking – and may have even taken her cat.
Vanessa Dennis is suing the Napolis and the law firm itself for allegedly “aiding, abetting, facilitating and conspiring with Marie’s attacks” in a $9 million defamation suit.
In her complaint, Ms Dennis, 33, said that Mrs Napoli, 47, waged an unremitting campaign against her, her family and her friends with messages denouncing and threatening her sent via email, Facebook and other social media sites.
The court papers feature graphic sexual details and insults contained in emails from the two women.
Ms Dennis claimed that Mrs Napoli pursued her even after she moved to a new job in Texas by sending Christmas cards to the wives of her new bosses describing Ms Dennis as a “sex addict” and warning: “If I were you, I would not let her near my husband.”
The Napolis, who met at law school in New York, are reported to have briefly split but are now back together, with expensive homes in Manhattan, Long Island and the Hamptons.
And Mr Napoli, 46, last week stood by his wife, just as she stood by him after learning of his affair. He told The New York Post that he supported his wife for “confronting a person that there was an affair with”.
He added: “Everything my wife said in any email, whether it sounds terrible or not, was all true and all factually correct.” He specifically denied that his wife had anything to do with the disappearance of Ms Dennis’s cat.
Mrs Napoli has in turn filed court papers in Illinois under the state’s Alienation of Affections Act claiming that she suffered as a result of Ms Dennis allegedly persuading her husband to have sex during a Chicago business trip.
In a separate case, Mr Napoli and Marc Bern, another founding partner, are now engaged in an ugly battle for control of the company. Mr Bern claimed that he discovered “startling” financial irregularities when Mr Napoli was struck down with leukaemia in May, according to court papers.
Mr Napoli, who is recovering from chemotherapy and a bone-marrow transplant, has fought back from his sickbed, claiming in his own court filings that Mr Bern is trying to stage an office coup while he is fighting cancer.
Mr Bern claimed in his court case that he discovered widespread financial irregularities and debts when he took over the administration of the firm after Mr Napoli fell ill.
He said that Mr Napoli since tried to appoint his wife to run the business in his absence and that the couple arranged for Mr Bern to be locked out of the firm’s computer and telephone system and to have his company credit card blocked.
Mr Napoli has since filed his own case against Mr Bern for breach of contract, accusing him of seeking to “orchestrate a takeover” of the firm while he was away fighting cancer.
The claims and counter-claims are working their way through the courts and the parties declined to comment further. What is certain now is that the future of a law firm renowned for its ability to sue others is now in the hands of the lawyers.
Chicago Tribune had a story on the alienation of affection suit
One of Illinois’ most archaic laws took a step closer to legal oblivion in a Cook County courtroom this week when a $4 million lawsuit brought by the wife of a high-profile attorney against an employee her husband had an affair with was settled.
Illinois was one of the last states with so-called heart balm laws still on the books that allow jilted spouses to sue their significant other’s paramours for damages. State lawmakers abolished the statute, which legal experts say had misogynistic roots in an era when women were treated as property, in 2016. Pending cases were unaffected.
The circumstances that led to one of the last remaining lawsuits were remarkable — the breakup of one of New York City’s top class-action law firms and a suspicious wife who had her husband and a younger married staff attorney trailed by private investigators from New York to Chicago to uncover their affair.
After four years of litigation, the case went in front of a Daley Center jury last week but was settled Thursday, after three days of testimony before the plaintiff, Marie Napoli, was called to the stand. The settlement terms are confidential. Napoli’s husband, Paul, was a founder of one of the country’s top class-action law firms, Napoli Bern, in New York, which had won some $3 billion in settlements against diet-drug makers and on behalf of Ground Zero workers.
The couple, both attorneys, married in Hawaii in 1997, had three children together and stuck together after the affair. With her lawsuit, Marie Napoli had sought damages of more than $400,000 from Paul Napoli’s paramour for the loss of the summer rental of one of their homes in the Hamptons where Paul Napoli lived after they separated for a few months, according to Marie Napoli’s deposition. They also wanted the $30,000 that Marie Napoli had paid to a New York attorney to draft a post-nuptial agreement after the infidelity came to light.
But legal experts said such lawsuits are never really about the money. In Illinois, the law was rarely used even when it was on the books because court rulings had limited any recovery to actual damages — not such things as emotional distress or other suffering, said divorce lawyer Brendan Hammer.
“They were never a customary part of the divorce lawyer toolbox,” Hammer said, adding that in this case the facts seemed to support the recovery of damages. “It’s been an arrow in the quiver of people who felt wronged and the need to go after the aggrieved party.”
Attorney Vanessa Dennis was hired into Napoli Bern’s asbestos litigation practice in February 2011 and eight months later began an 18-month affair with Paul Napoli even though they both were married, she testified at a deposition. They met in hotels near their office and once had a threesome, she testified.
Paul Napoli denies ever having a lengthy affair, writing in court papers that the relationship only consisted of sex during a 2013 trip to Chicago. “I am sorry to say that in April, 2013, I succumbed to (Dennis’) advances and we engaged in sex at the Four Seasons Hotel,” he said in a 2017 affidavit filed in the case. “My wife and I had a monogamous marriage, but for this aberration when I could not withstand Ms. Dennis’ sexual advances.”
The two realized they had been discovered during a 2013 business trip to Chicago, Dennis testified, when they noticed the same man — a private investigator — had followed them from their hotel to Spiaggia on Michigan Avenue and then tried to get on their elevator back at the hotel.
Within days of the affair coming to light, Marie Napoli allegedly emailed Dennis, calling her a “slut” and later sent Dennis’ then-husband a text that read “tell ur hoe 2 stop (expletive) my man, we got a family,” according to a defamation lawsuit filed by Dennis.
That lawsuit alleged that Marie Napoli also sent letters to the wives of partners at the Houston law firm where Dennis had been hired after leaving New York, calling Dennis a “sexual predator.”
“Ms. Dennis is a sex addict that attacked my family by sexually pursuing my husband at a time that I was fighting breast cancer,” Marie Napoli testified during her 2016 deposition. “And it did cause me extreme emotional distress.”
That June, Dennis fired off her own angry email to Paul Napoli.
“What’s more believable Paul — that a 32-year-old junior attorney who weighs 100 pounds soaking wet seduced and physically attacked her 40 something year old boss (who happens to be a managing partner and a millionaire) and twice her size or the other way around?” read the email, according to Dennis’ lawsuit.
It may be one of the last Illinois court cases to go to trial under the heart balm statute, which allows spouses to sue for alienation of affection and criminal conversation — a 17th-century British common law concept once employed by dukes whose wives had slept with other men at a time when adultery was a criminal act.
“We are happy and relieved that the case has been settled,” said Dennis’ attorney Craig Tobin. “I hope it brings some closure and peace of mind to Mrs. Napoli as well.”
An attorney for the Napolis did not respond to requests for comment.
Tobin said the antiquated state law is “offensive” in a society that long ago stopped viewing women as property whose value must be repaid. At least one other case filed in Cook County — this one by a woman who claimed her husband’s co-worker had slept with her spouse while she was away for work — is pending.