Social Security Document Submission: June 1993

Page 25 of Social Security Document Submission

FAX NO. 609 235 5569 MEREDITH FINANCIAL SERVICES
Transmittal for Mrs. Estelle Jacobson c/o Mr. Edward Jacobson

Dear Stell,

In the spring of 1987, Sheryl Ferguson left Hogan & Hartson to work at a litigation support contractor, Atlis. At that time Atlis was doing work as a contractor for Hogan on the project I was then working on as an agency-supplied temporary. I received a telephone call one day from a Miss Rice at Atlis. Miss Rice said that Sheryl Ferguson had given her my name as the contact person at Hogan. In fact, there was a data base administrator working in the department who at that time was also acting as temporary manager of the department until a permanent manager was hired. I gave Miss Rice the telephone number of the data base administrator.

We are left with the anomalous conclusion that Miriam Chilton may have based her decision to terminate me in part based on the word of someone who Sheryl Ferguson, the founder of the department, apparently had little or no confidence in.

Assuming a parallel between my difficulties at Hogan & Hartson and Akin Gump, as has been asserted, what does this anecdote suggest about my accusers at Akin Gump?

GF

Page 26 of Social Security Document Submission

FAX NO. 609 235 5569 MEREDITH FINANCIAL SERVICES
Transmittal for Mrs. Estelle Jacobson c/o Mr. Edward Jacobson

Dear Stell,

Here’s a Sherlock Holmes problem.

When I was working on the Hoechst-Celanese chemical analysis project, I prepared an alphabetical list of so-called “chemicals of interest.” These were the specific chemicals whose biological effects were to be noted. Each of these chemicals has a corresponding “CAS” number (an identifying number assigned by Chemical Abstracts).

The list would have looked something like this (I’m making up some chemical names and numbers.)

1. Cadmium 64-8493-8492
2. Lead 98-3782-9839
3. Nickel 71-0903-9920
4. Zinc 21-4783-4899

1. 21-47834899 Zinc
2. 64-8493-8492 Cadmium
3. 71-09093-9920 Nickel
4. 98-3782-9839 Lead

I typed the list on the firm’s computer system. What I’m wondering is whether Katherine MacKinnon found out about this list and made some favorable comment to either Chris Robertson or Katherine Harkness. I don’t remember when I prepared this list, but it would be interesting if I prepared this list in late September 1991. (Katherine MacKinnon had a high opinion of me. If she found out about this list her comments would have been very laudatory.)

We also have to ask whether the preparation of such a useful list, which perhaps no other legal assistant had prepared, indicates a high degree of apathy with regard to the project or something else.

Note the probable argument that Katherine Harkness may have made to management. “He’s so insecure, so unable to compete with the other legal assistants, that when I criticized his work, he was enraged and he tried to devalue me.” This argument is a reversal projection of “the attorneys have such a high opinion of Freedman; their praise of him enrages me,” [The use of reversal/projection is significant, since these two ego defenses are at the core of both paranoia and anti-Semitism. See Gay, P. Freud: A Life for Our Time, at 281 (Norton: 1988)].

GF

[Note the continued preoccupation in the above message with the quality of my work; I am obviously responding to an accusation that my work was of poor quality; Akin Gump denied that it told me my work quality was poor.]

Page 27-28 of Social Security Document Submission

FAX NO. 609 235 5569 MEREDITH FINANCIAL SERVICES
Transmittal for Mrs. Estelle Jacobson c/o Mr. Edward Jacobson

Dear Stell,

What do you make of this argument?

1. The termination of my employment by Akin Gump was malicious and discriminatory.

2. The malicious and discriminatory termination of my employment was carried out by the chairman of the firm’s hiring committee.

2. A letter dated February 14, 1985, signed by a former chairman of the hiring committee, establishes that I met the minimum criteria for serious consideration for an associate position with the firm.

4. Throughout my employment with the firm, supervisory personnel and attorneys, including the husband of the firm’s recruitment administrator*, engaged in harassing acts calculated to intimidate me not to solicit an associate position with the firm. (*During my meeting with Dennis Race and Malcolm Lassman on October 24, 1991 I observed Dennis Race taking notes, which may have recorded an incident I recounted during the meeting concerning David Eisenstat, husband of the recruitment administrator.) The meeting occurred before I had the slightest suspicion that my complaint would lead to my termination. At no time during my termination meeting with Dennis Race on October 29, 1991, indeed, at no time during the entire period of my employment with the firm, did I solicit an associate position with the firm. On a separate but related issue, during one part of my private meeting with Dennis Race, after the termination notice, I had the feeling he was tugging at me, trying to get me to raise the issue of an associate position. He told me he would serve as a job reference for me if I were to seek a position in the private sector or in government (an allusion to Robert Strauss?), he mentioned that he was handling my termination as he would handle the termination of an attorney, he mentioned my having worked on a matter that involved the Railway Labor Act, he said I was a “talented guy” (a peculiar comment to make under the circumstances). Keep in mind that Dennis Race is a litigator who was engaged at that point in time in an interaction that posed potential liability for the firm. This was not mere polite chit-chat -- everything he said and did at that time was carefully calculated to advance the firm’s strategic gain and to lead to my strategic loss. In a poker game a scratch on the chin is probably not just a scratch on the chin. One wonders; what strategic gain would Dennis Race derive from my requesting consideration for an associate position at that point? One thing we may conclude is that it must have been an important issue; he must have seen potential liability on this issue--liability that would be mitigated by my express request for consideration for an associate position.

5. In mid-June 1988 a partner dissuaded me from soliciting an associate position with the firm.

6. In 1990 a legal assistant, Brian Burns, was granted an associate position.

7. An agency-supplied temporary legal assistant, Jan Fraser-Smith, whose services were retained at about the same time I began working for the firm as an agency-supplied temporary, and who performed the very task I performed for the firm, was later granted a position as law clerk.

8. During the entire period of my employment I was employed in tasks far below my qualifications and experience.

9. I was terminated only days after I made an official request to the partner in charge of the legal assistant program that I be granted more substantive work.

GF

Page 29 of Social Security Document Submission

FAX NO. 609 235 5569 MEREDITH FINANCIAL SERVICES
Transmittal for Mrs. Estelle Jacobson c/o Mr. Edward Jacobson

Dear Stell,

Here’s an interesting tidbit.

In the spring of 1987, Sheryl Ferguson left Hogan & Hartson to work at a litigation support contractor, Atlis. At that time Atlis was doing work as a contractor for Hogan on the project I was then working on as an agency-supplied temporary. I received a telephone call one day from a Miss Rice at Atlis. Miss Rice said that Sheryl Ferguson had given her my name as the contact person at Hogan. In fact, there was a data base administrator working in the department who at that time was also acting as temporary manager of the department until a permanent manager was hired. I gave Miss Rice the telephone number of the data base administrator.

What do you make of that?

GF

[handwritten note:] 6/29/92