Giampetro-Meyer believes that Mehri is forcing corporate America to recognize unfair attitudes that have been woven into policy. "Many white Americans have stopped thinking that workplace discrimination is a problem," she says. "It's not malicious. They think that the process works, that people are judged on their own merits. They're ignorant of their own privilege. Cyrus Mehri is raising discrimination claims in this kind of climate. He's opening a lot of eyes."
For most executives, trial lawyers are the business equivalent of locusts: They arrive in swarms, and they leave a trail of destruction. The most notorious legal locust is litigator Bill Lerach, who has made a lucrative career of filing class-action suits against companies whose stock price dips in the wake of bad news or disclosures. His targets have included Intel, Martha Stewart's media empire, and, of course, Enron. He is the lawyer whom CEOs love to hate.
Mehri is no Bill Lerach. For one thing, he is a hard guy to dislike. A bit on the short side, with wire-frame glasses, suit and suspenders, and a slight paunch, he's unfailingly polite and down-to-earth, like a scholarly uncle whom you would consult on homework. "Cyrus has the demeanor of a Labrador puppy that hides the mentality of a pit bull," says Craig McDonald, Mehri's former boss at Public Citizen, Nader's group.
Which is not to suggest that Mehri doesn't ruffle feathers. Because his cases revolve around the charged topic of race, they tend to be divisive. Civil-rights activists, legal scholars, even judges have described the settlements as historic, groundbreaking, and creative. But Mehri's critics, many of them corporate defense attorneys, question the wisdom of giving a panel of outsiders so much control over a company. They question the backlash among white employees in the aftermath of litigation. They question the fear of hiring minorities (who could one day sue) that these cases generate. They question Mehri's tactics, accusing him of trying his cases in the media rather than in the courtroom. And they question his motives.
The plaintiffs' attorney's fees, which are determined by the court, are usually between 20% and 30% of the cash portion of the settlement. In the Coke case, the court awarded the lawyers 20%, or $20.1 million divided among four firms.
A common complaint among corporate defense attorneys is that employment-discrimination class actions rarely make it to trial. Regardless of whether a claim has any factual basis, companies settle to curtail the public-relations nightmare. In that view, some cases amount to extortion by litigation.
To hear Mehri tell it, he's forever the underdog. Class-action litigation may be an effective tool for reform, but Mehri, who also handles securities fraud and consumer fraud, says that discrimination class actions are the least desirable cases. They are an expensive gamble, from both a business and a legal standpoint. Since class actions can take years to resolve, an unsuccessful suit can bankrupt a small law firm. The expenses quickly add up: dozens of depositions, statistical analysts, labor economists, and other expert witnesses. Not to mention the lost revenue for the thousands of billable hours that may or may not get reimbursed. Naturally, Mehri is rather choosy. Out of 100 calls from prospective clients, he'll narrow the list to 20, then 5, then one.
When Mehri takes on a multibillion-dollar company, he's easily outnumbered by the corporate defense attorneys, even with the additional attorneys whom he recruits to work on the case. The larger the defendant, the greater the resources required. The litigation is beyond combative. "It's scorched earth," says Mehri, who is the founding partner of Mehri & Skalet PLLC, which has eight lawyers in its offices in Washington, DC's hip Dupont Circle neighborhood. When he went after Coke, he approached a half-dozen firms in Atlanta about joining the suit, but they all declined. "One of them told me, 'Suing Coke in Atlanta is like suing the Pope in the Vatican,' " Mehri says. It's an oft-repeated line.
Coke was the first case for his new firm, which he financed with the fees that he received from the Texaco case. For months, it was just Mehri, newly hired associate Pamela Coukos, and a paralegal who was researching the case. Three people up against the world's largest soft-drink company. It wasn't until the last minute that Mehri found cocounsel. Says Coukos: "I didn't realize how risky the case was until Cyrus shopped it around to other firms. It was a huge frustration for us, but he never said, 'We shouldn't do this.' He would say, 'I don't know if this is doable.' "
Email
Digg
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Buzz Up!
LinkedIn
