Lawyer sued for ‘quiet quitting’
A legal firm in New York have sued one of its own lawyers, accusing her of using remote work as a way to “quiet quit” while she started a new venture.
Quiet quitting is a relatively new term that refers to employees who do nothing above the bare minimum in their role, often leading them to end up on the chopping board.
Defendant Heather Palmore then filed a countersuit against Napoli Solnik accusing the firm of mistreating minority employees, “brazen bullying” and seeking to “intimate people who stand up to them”.
The lawsuit, which was filed in late February 2023 in a state court, accused Palmore of “breach of fiduciary duty of loyalty, aiding and abetting breach of fiduciary duty of loyalty, injurious falsehood, unjust enrichment, declaratory judgement and constructive trust”.
According to the firm’s lawsuit, Palmore “misrepresented her skill set, experience, and book of business to obtain a position with Napoli Shkolnik, where she took advantage of the new remote work environment to ‘quiet quit’ her job, and simultaneously worked for two law firms at once,”
The firm also accused her of “performing little to no work for Napoli Shkolnik while directly competing with the firm by simultaneously running Defendant Palmore Law Group”.
Palmore said in her counterclaim that partner Paul Napoli recruited her to be the firm’s chief trial counsel in October 2021.
“Ms Palmore has been subjected to and witnessed egregious race and disability discrimination by senior management as part of their standard operating procedures,” she said in a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court.
Palmore said she agreed to engage in mediation to settle her claims but claimed the firm used the time to “fabricate its own bogus lawsuit to file before Palmore could file her lawsuit — and gain some ill-conceived strategic advantage by filing first”.
The firm claims Palmore was never committed to her job and that she established her own company almost as soon as she was hired.
“Further, not even one month after defendant Palmore was hired by the plaintiff, defendant Palmore established her own separate law firm, The Palmore Group, PC, which she was operating and marketing while claiming to work on a full-time, attention, and energy basis for the plaintiff,” it said.
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