Piper and prejudice

An ex-DLA Piper secretary has abruptly pulled the plug on a sexual harassment complaint she lodged against the Boston law firm and a former supervisor.

Two years after filing a federal suit seeking $1.8 million in damages, plaintiff Shonnett Sisco has done an about face, requesting that U.S. District Court Judge Denise J. Casper in Boston dismiss the case with prejudice.

“Sisco states as the reason for this dismissal that she learned during discovery that the facts were different from what she initially believed,” writes her lawyer, Robert S. Catapano-Friedman of Boston. “As such, she disavows all claims and recitations of events made in her Complaint.”

Sisco had alleged that DLA Piper failed to properly investigate accusations that real estate partner Lawrence E. Uchill sexually harassed her in 2008.

The seemingly out-of-left-field dismissal request, which was filed on a Saturday, came days after Casper delivered what appeared to be a big blow for DLA Piper by denying the firm’s bid to stay discovery until completion of a motion to dismiss.

While little reason was given for Sisco’s sudden change of heart, the parties have asked the judge, pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 41(a)(1)(ii), to end the case without awarding costs or attorneys’ fees.

Casper had yet to rule on a dismissal request filed by the firm’s Boston counsel, Joshua M. Davis of Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, who argued Sisco had no standing to be in court because she voluntarily filed for bankruptcy shortly after informing the DLA Piper management team what had allegedly transpired with her boss.

Davis declined Lawyers Weekly’s request to discuss the case.

Uchill and Elliot M. Surkin, managing partner of DLA Piper’s Boston office, did not return calls for comment. A woman answering Surkin’s phone said he was out of town for the week and unavailable by phone or email.

When contacted about the case in 2010, Surkin said Sisco’s accusations were frivolous and without merit.

“The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination has already investigated this case and found no evidence that our firm, or any of the individuals named in the complaint, had engaged in any wrongdoing,” he said at the time. “We are confident that the court will reach the same conclusion once the facts are presented.”

Susan M. Bourque of Boston, who is not involved in the case, says Sisco’s dismissal request seems “highly unusual.”

While it’s not unheard of for a litigant to obtain game-changing information from an expert during the pre-trial stage of a medical-malpractice case, the Parker Scheer lawyer says, it’s hard to imagine that happening in a relatively cut-and-dry employment suit.

“Since the plaintiff brings the suit, and assuming there was a good-faith basis to file it in the first place, perhaps during the course of discovery information was learned that undermined the strength of the case,” she says. “You don’t see this happen every day, but it could be that the plaintiff and her lawyer believed they weren’t going to be successful at trial, and therefore decided at this late stage that the costs associated with moving forward made it cost prohibitive.”

Catapano-Friedman declined to comment.

The suit is not his client’s first. At the conclusion of a 2005 mediation, Sisco’s hostile work environment and racial discrimination suit against Boston’s Goodwin Procter was dismissed by agreement.