Pig in a Poke -- My Whistleblower Attorney, Part 1

Pig in a Poke – My Whistleblower Attorney

Jenny’s emails beginning in March 2014 made clear that I would be fired, and I began considering the need for an attorney.  Although I had worked with company attorneys for many years, I had never hired one for myself.  I googled whistleblower attorneys and found some candidates on superlawyer.com and other sites. 

One firm boasted of winning $500,000 for a client, which seemed a small amount to brag about.  I settled on one, Stephen Jaffe, who asked potential clients to complete an “intake form” laying out facts.  That struck me as an appealingly efficient way to proceed, and his downtown San Francisco office was outside the circle that I expected might be influenced by HomeFirst’s reputation for doing good work.   Jaffe’s office shared the floor with two other attorney’s offices and the floor required security approval to reach.  That struck me as positive: to avoid hit men sent by defeated defense attorneys (rather than disappointed plaintiffs). 

When I met with him on June 4, the day after I was fired, Jaffe was accompanied by two interns from Golden Gate University, which I took as evidence of his reputation in the community.  He had apparently read at least some of the intake form and asked reasonable questions about my situation.  All in all he seemed as plausible as any I might meet via the internet.  I signed what he described as his standard contingency fee agreement with its 40% contingency. 

I handed Jaffe a flash drive with 575 files, including about 350 emails, which, I explained, I had collected while fulfilling my responsibilities as CFO and Compliance Officer.  I felt good, and Jaffe said I had “a case.”  Of course.  My limited research on attorneys was balanced by my optimism: the emails provided clear evidence of the connection between my whistleblowing and my termination.  I needed a water carrier more than a genius litigator.

Two weeks after our meeting, I had heard nothing more from Jaffe.  In response to my email he said he would re-contact their attorney, whose name I had provided.  The absence of movement and his use of the peculiar term “re-contact” made me uncomfortable.  Four more weeks passed with no progress.  I suggested that HomeFirst would kick the case to their insurance carrier, which would use an attorney, Rona Layton, with whom I had worked on the case of another difficult HomeFirst employee.  My doubts rose, but I was locked into a $5,000 retainer.

In mid-July Jaffe sent a letter to the insurance company attorney offering to negotiate in good faith as long as they contacted him by July 24 and threatening to file a lawsuit otherwise.  After I followed up two weeks later, Jaffe emailed Layton, “unless we are engaged in good faith negotiations towards a settlement, I plan to file a civil complaint the week of August 11^th.”

On August 8, Layton replied that I was fired because of my “inability or refusal to act in a professional, courteous manner” and that I “decided that a whistleblower claim would be more lucrative than just retiring.”  She wrote that my “plan to make the Board and the CEO look bad, and to cast [my]self as the one person who was doing the right thing, is transparent and disingenuous.”  She closed saying, “Nevertheless, protracted litigation is generally not in anyone’s best interest, and so if Mr. Veuve would like to make a reasonable settlement proposal, I would encourage my client to consider it.”

Jaffe sent Layton’s letter to me without comment.  When I asked what the next steps were, Jaffe replied, “We have to formulate a demand figure.  Please think about a number for which you would settle.  Remember, a settlement is – by definition – a compromise; not a 100% recovery of all your losses.  When you tell me that number, I will recommend where we should start with a demand.”

I worried that Jaffe was pointing toward a relatively low, easy to negotiate figure even though our contingency fee agreement seemed to recommend a large settlement in which he would share.  The email suggested that his calculus was more complicated than I had imagined and that more was involved than the quality of my case and the money HomeFirst would be willing to pay.