Cadwalader threatens to sue London partners
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Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft has threatened to sue the seven London partners who are leaving for Paul Hastings, after initially promising an amicable separation.
Former chairman Bob Link flew in to London this morning to try to manage the situation. Link is planning to transfer to London to rebuild the office in February.
Cadwalader has instructed UK employment specialist Lewis Silkin, which has written a letter before action to the departing partners alleging that they have broken the terms of the Cadwalader partnership agreement by enticing associates and support staff to leave with them.
In addition to threatening the four departing equity partners and three non-equity partners, Cadwalader is trying to force Paul Hastings to take on more associates and support staff than it needs using TUPE legislation.
Cadwalader released a statement to the media despite the Lewis Silkin letters demanding confidentiality.
The statement read: “Based on the advice of counsel, Cadwalader believes that TUPE therefore applies and will affect the segment of the employee population in our London office which worked with, for or in relation, to the business of those partners.
“This is a legal matter that will be discussed between the two firms impacted by this law. Our goal, and the intent of TUPE, is to protect the rights of those employees.”
It is thought that Cadwalader hopes to avoid making redundancy payments by enforcing TUPE.
The seven departing partners declined the opportunity to comment, as did Paul Hastings.
For more on Cadwalader's London office, see this week's feature.
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Readers' comments (3)
anonymous | 27-Jan-2009 3:32 pm
Most sincere quote of the year goes to...
"Our goal ...is to protect the rights of those employees". Yeah sure. Even by Cadwalader standards the cynicism is breathtaking. Pity the CWT associates (once again) who are caught between a dysfunctional imploding office and a group of self serving partners scurrying for the nearest exit after happily cherrypicking their most useful assets and dumping the rest in true CWT fashion.
As for those left at CWT, they find themselves being foisted on a firm that does not want them by a firm who does not want them. I can't imagine the people at Paul Hastings are too impressed or excited by the new arrivals.
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Anonymous | 27-Jan-2009 5:52 pm
makes sense
Breathtaking cynicism aside (sadly it's only to be expected from these people at this point), based on the numbers being batted around, the departing partners are taking at the very most maybe 75% of their current associates with them. So effectively those seven are making 25-30% of their associates redundant without bearing any of the assorted costs (financial and reputational, although it's probably too late for them to be concerned about the latter) associated with redundancies. Not to mention redundancies among support staff, who doubtlessly will be impacted to a much greater extent than the associates. Obviously the departing partners were trained well during their time at CWT...
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Anonymous | 28-Jan-2009 3:20 pm
no billables
paul hastings will chuck them all out when it realises they have no work!
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