Spurned Associate’s Suit Against Orrick Still Alive

[WSJ_law_blog]

To many associates in BigLaw, Patrick Hoeffner may have gained folk hero status in 2006 when he filed suit against Orrick, claiming the firm shafted him when it declined to make him partner.

Click here for an LB post on the suit, which claimed that Orrick promised to make Hoeffner partner, because it allegedly feared the former intellectual-property associate was heading to Chadbourne & Parke and taking mad business with him.

Orrick at the time called the suit baseless. In 2008, a New York trial court partially granted a motion for summary judgment dismissing the suit.

Yesterday, a New York appellate court reinstated Hoeffner’s claim that he was induced to remain at Orrick with the promise of partnership. (HT to the Legal Profession Blog.)

“Plaintiff’s alleged reliance on the individual defendants’ statements concerning the partnership process at the law firm and plaintiff’s partnership prospects was not unreasonable as a matter of law,” the appellate court held in its ruling. “He was an associate with no experience in applying for partnership at the firm.”

Orrick’s lawyer, Gerard Harper at Paul Weiss, emphasizes that the appellate court upheld the lower court’s dismissal of other claims by Hoeffner. As far as damages, Hoeffner at most will be entitled to the “the difference between what Orrick actually paid him and the outstanding offer from Chadbourne, which he turned down to stay at Orrick,” Harper says. “That number is south of $60,000. That’s like the cost of a couple of depositions in today’s world.”

Hoeffner’s “economic damages are limited to $60,000,” his lawyer, Douglas Wigdor says. “But the other half of the story is that Mr. Hoeffner is entitled to uncapped punitive damages, which we believes will be in the millions of dollars.” Wigdor says that Hoeffner is still practicing law, though he did not know where. “Had he gotten what he was promised at Orrick, he’d be earning substantially more money than he is earning now.”