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The cold shoulder

By KRIS HUNDLEY
Published April 3, 2005

Is it career suicide for a woman to complain about sexual harassment or discrimination in the workplace?

Is it especially treacherous for a female lawyer to make such complaints against the firm where she hopes to advance?

Female attorneys around the Tampa Bay area considered this question last week after Holland & Knight promoted - then quickly demoted - Douglas A. Wright, a senior partner in Tampa who had been reprimanded just months ago for sexual harassment.

While the firm expressed concerns about the publicity's potential damage to Wright's reputation, Holland's executives made only passing reference to the possible effect on the nine women who complained about Wright's behavior.

These women, eight of whom are still with Holland, cited confidentiality agreements that forced them to remain silent.

While the women at Holland were mum, three women who were once in similar situations offered advice.

Bonnie Pinzel, formerly of Tampa, and Nancy Ezold of Philadelphia charged their law firms with discrimination after they were passed over for promotions. Dawn Gallina of Reston, Va., won a retaliatory discharge claim against her firm after she complained about discrimination and harassment.

These three women personify what happens when a female lawyer takes on a big law firm. And though they said their efforts came with costs, they agree on one thing: You must stand up.

In 1988, Bonnie Pinzel closed what she said was the biggest deal of the year for her employer, Foley & Lardner in Tampa.

At 38, and after five years as an associate with the firm, Pinzel felt sure she'd be rewarded with a partnership. She was wrong.

Shortly thereafter she left the firm, but not before filing a sex discrimination lawsuit. It was a bold move and one Pinzel, now 55, believes shaped her career - and not necessarily for the better.

"I survived," said Pinzel, who works in the legal department of Fannie Mae in Washington, D.C. "But I could never work for a major law firm again."

For six months after leaving Foley, she said she got nothing but rejections from other Tampa law firms. One large firm expressed an interest in Pinzel, who graduated cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center and specialized in finance work. But when the interviewer got nothing but the most rudimentary response to his queries about Pinzel from her former employer, the antennae went up.

"The interviewer called me back and said, "What's going on over there? They wouldn't tell me anything,' " said Pinzel, who said the lawsuit was not public at that time. "Then that (job) possibility went away."

A year after leaving Foley, she landed a position at a small securities law firm in Tampa, thanks to a friendship with one of the partners. Before taking the job, she reached a financial settlement with Foley, ending the lawsuit.

Pinzel would not disclose the size of the settlement, saying only, "I settled the case for an extremely small amount of money to avoid litigating in Tampa. I could not take the case to trial and stay at my new employer because it would have killed that firm."

Foley & Lardner's managing partner in Tampa, Mike Annis, did not return a call Friday about Pinzel's case. Maurice McSweeney, the firm's diversity partner in Milwaukee, said he had no recollection of the lawsuit though he has been with Foley for 42 years.

Pinzel believes the lawsuit only made it tougher for her to get business in the male-dominated world of investment banking.

"You lose some goodwill," she said. "You lose the ability to call the guys down the street and say, "Help me out here,' because they're mad at you. It's very amorphous."

Pinzel left the legal field in 1996 for a position as a retail broker with Paine Webber. By 1999, wanting to return to law, she headed to Washington, D.C., where she landed the position with Fannie Mae.

"It's extremely difficult to move to a different town midway through your career because you don't have a client base," said Pinzel, who was unable to find work as a lawyer in Tampa. "But I had to leave Tampa to stay in the legal field."

Today Pinzel bubbles with anger at what she perceives as inequity in the workplace.

"Watch guys who get into serious trouble and they land on their feet all the time," she said. "But when women get slammed or bring complaints, the guys don't rally around them."

And though Pinzel decided not to pursue her case against Foley in court, she's having some regrets. The reason, she says: One of 16 partners in Tampa's Foley office is a woman.

"I wanted the firm to change," she said. "Sixteen years later, they haven't changed at all."

Like Bonnie Pinzel, Nancy Ezold sued her Philadelphia employer, Wolf Block Schorr & Solis-Cohen, after she was passed over for a partnership. Unlike Pinzel, however, Ezold took the firm to court.

During the 1991 trial, Ezold's lawyers introduced the job evaluations of her male peers who had been chosen as partners at Wolf Block. According to the men's personnel files, one had been deemed by the partners to have committed malpractice; another had been charged with sexual harassment. Both had been promoted.

Ezold, who had been a litigator with Wolf Block for six years, had some minor criticisms in her file, but had been largely praised for her work. The firm had tried to make a deal with Ezold before she sued: If she'd stick around another year, they'd give her a partnership managing the domestic relations practice, an area in which she had no expertise or interest.

"It was amazing how I was not qualified as a litigator in general but only qualified in domestic relations," Ezold said. "It was so stereotypical, slotting a woman in family law and I refused to do that."

After a two-week trial in federal court, the judge found in favor of Ezold. The law firm appealed, and the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision.

In Ezold's case, however, a legal defeat translated into a personal victory. Ezold, now in her late 50s, said she had no trouble finding work with other Philadelphia law firms after leaving Wolf Block.

"They were satisfied with my work," she said. "That's what mattered to them."

The trial only publicized her talents.

"People from all over called and asked me to represent them," Ezold said. "It validated my litigation skills. And it also gave me the opportunity to make employment law the primary focus of my legal career."

In 1994 she started her own firm in the Philadelphia suburb of Bala Cynwyd.

"I represent enormously talented, skilled people who have come up against (discrimination)," said Ezold, whose group includes three female lawyers and one male lawyer. "It's a terrific opportunity and satisfying to be able to do something for those people."

Ezold's advice to women who are facing sexual harassment or discrimination in the workplace: If you feel you can't do anything about it, go elsewhere. Get as much support as possible from male and female associates. And don't expect bullies to go away if people don't speak up.

Ezold said she knows it's difficult to speak out. She was a single mother of two and in her 40s when she brought her case against Wolf Block. But far from killing her career, it catapulted Ezold into a position where she feels her litigation skills are most appreciated.

"I lost my case legally speaking, but it's had great rewards for me," she said. "I've spoken all over the country about employment discrimination. Maybe I've given other people the courage to speak up."

Dawn Gallina said her problems began at the Mintz Levin law firm in Reston, Va., about a month after she joined the firm in late 1999 as a mid level associate. After her 2-year-old daughter paid a visit to the office at lunchtime, Gallina said the managing partner, Mark Wishner, asked why she hadn't mentioned she had a child when she interviewed with the firm.

"I told him I didn't see how it was relevant," said Gallina, who is now 41. From that point on, she claimed, her relationship with Wishner and other partners in the Reston office went downhill. Gallina said Wishner began treating her more harshly than male associates, calling her a "stupid b--" and "f--ing idiot." She said he told her it was difficult for female lawyers to balance their work as lawyers with the demands of a family.

Gallina claimed Wishner's successor as managing partner, Scott Meza, told her she had to decide whether she wanted to be "a successful mommy or successful lawyer."

When Gallina complained about the way she was being treated to Mintz Levin's headquarters in Boston, she was urged not to file a formal complaint, she said. Partners in the Reston office later berated her for taking her complaints to Boston, she said. And her pay increase was postponed in January 2001, even though the firm was raising the hourly rate she charged clients.

"They said there was an "undercurrent of concern' about my work," Gallina said. "It was the first I had heard about it."

Two months later, while she was out with a medical emergency involving her daughter, Gallina received a phone message that she had been terminated for poor performance. Gallina responded by suing Mintz Levin for sexual harassment, gender discrimination and retaliation. The court dismissed the harassment and discrimination claims but let Gallina's retaliatory discharge complaint go to trial in February 2003.

After hearing the evidence, the jury returned a verdict in Gallina's favor, awarding her $190,000 in compensatory damages and $330,000 in back pay.

Mintz Levin unsuccessfully appealed the verdict, then settled with Gallina for an undisclosed amount in March.

A spokeswoman for Mintz Levin, noting terms of the settlement are confidential, said, "Our firm remains committed to providing a workplace that offers equal opportunity and fair treatment for all employees."

Wishner and Meza remain employed in the firm's Reston office.

Gallina called the grueling legal process "four years of hell" and said there's no doubt her lawsuit eliminated some job options. After leaving the firm, she got a job with state government in Virginia. Then she moved to Richmond, where she is in-house counsel for a corporation.

"I have not worked for a law firm since (leaving Mintz Levin) and I would consider myself completely tainted by the experience," she said. "Though the Washington, D.C., area is large, the legal community is very insular.

"You have to ask yourself, "Do you want to remain in an organization that condones that kind of behavior or do you want to speak out?' " she said. "And if we don't say anything, it's not going to get better."

Kris Hundley can be reached at 727 892-2996 or hundley@sptimes.com

[Last modified April 3, 2005, 00:09:18]