Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani Oakland Partners Mike Laurenson and Mollie Burks and San Francisco Senior Counsel Maya Ohana successfully defended a San Francisco public relations company against a claim by a former executive that he was owed more than $1 million in severance under his employment contract after the company indicated an intent to reduce his duties. The executive claimed the company had breached his employment contract and intentionally prevented him from meeting certain performance metrics under his contract. He relied in part on testimony from an expert forensic accountant to demonstrate that he would have achieved his performance metrics but for the company’s interference.
The Gordon & Rees team not only demonstrated the expert’s opinions to be unreliable, but also introduced evidence of the executive’s dishonesty – including testimony from his estranged wife that he was lying about a very important fact in the case – which irreparably damaged his credibility with the jury. After three hours of deliberations, the San Francisco jury returned a verdict for Gordon & Rees’s client on the executive’s tort and breach of employment contract claims, and even awarded Gordon & Rees’s client $125,000 on the company’s claim that the executive had wrongly failed to pay back a loan from the company.