he says: “As anyone who has telephoned our firm from the moment of her hire until the day she quit would attest, Ms. Brockington only used kind and supportive words to describe my own lawyering skills, personality and deep commitment to my clients. Ms. Brockington’s own words completely undermine her present claims against me.

Her sensationalistic allegations, replete as they are with shocking and personally outrageous and destructive claims against me and this firm, are, simply stated, all lies. As a careful reading of her “story” will reveal, some of her allegations could not have actually occurred during the time period during which she worked for this firm, others are mere fantasy and pure fiction, and others are her attempt to conflate personal private, consensual behavior–of which I’ve been an outspoken champion for the entirety of my professional life–with non-existent workplace activity.

The local tabloid media reported these entirely unfounded and baseless claims against me and this firm raised by this one former disgruntled employee, yet did not feel it prudent or necessary to investigate her story in a quest for the whole truth.”

I have more than one problem with this construct. First, it excludes the real possibilities that Brockington was either actually harassed prior to her first suit, but not at the Tuckner firm, or, probably less likely, that she was not really harassed before her first suit but was at the Tuckner firm. I agree that one of the two all-or-nothing options posed in the post are more often the result, but we certainly don’t know that here with enough certainty to call Tuckner hypocrites or Brockington a claim fabricator.

Second, the post suggests to me the possibility that Brockington is just very easy to offend, and the Tuckner firm, for reasons unknown here, obtained a significant settlement for what would be mild, off-color humor to most people. Perhaps Brockington is a prude, but her prior employer also was engaged in inappropriate conduct and wanted to settle her case to shut down the risk that other would come forward.

I am also concerned by the suggestion (at least I took it that way) that, in your option where Tuckner prevailed on a false claim, that the Tuckner firm was aware of such a fact. It seems to me that, in the absence of something like e-mails to confirm harassment, it is very hard to know with any certainty whether a client’s claim of harassment actually or closely reflects the truth. Attorneys cannot be held to the standard of omniscience.