Legal News

7th Circuit Lets Ex-Foley Associate Go Forward With Discrimination Suit

By Dan Slater

All the law firm news these days seems to be layoff-related. Here’s more of that, but of a slightly different stripe.

Zafar Hasan, a Muslim of Indian descent, claims that, post-9/11, he was fired from Foley & Lardner because of his religion, race, national origin and color. The district court granted the firm’s motion for summary judgment. Today, a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit reversed. Here’s the opinion.

The court concludes:

Foley initially claimed that it fired Mr. Hasan for poor performance. . . .However, after Foley located Mr. Hasan’s work evaluations, which were mostly positive, the firm changed its tune, maintaining that it actually fired Mr. Hasan not because his work was unacceptable but because it only had enough work to keep the best associates in the department occupied.

A reasonable jury could also find that Foley’s alternative explanation—that it fired Mr. Hasan because the firm did not have enough work for all the associates in the Business Law Department—is pretextual as well. . .One partner reported that Mr. Hasan was the only associate fired for lack of work; another testified at his deposition that Foley had dismissed other lawyers because of the economic climate. And the internal firm-wide memo claimed that Foley’s economic performance in 2001-2002 was strong, while Foley now contends that the firm was in a downward spiral that required it to jettison Mr. Hasan. A jury could reasonably infer from these facts that Foley partners directed work towards other, non-Muslim associates in the Business Law Department in order to use Mr. Hasan’s lack of work as a pretext to fire him.

A call to Foley was not immediately returned.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 15, 2008 (boomark / email).