Savage Garden; Clayton Utz v Bridgette Styles Litigation Crisis Deepens

The Clayton Utz website is a bit like the Firm Spy’s backyard – out of date and underloved. We took a tour of the Clutz internet offering several days ago and noticed that the firm’s Litigation & Dispute Resolution page has some discernable weeds growing on it – it is currently quoting an extract from the 2008 Chambers Global Guide (Asia Pacific):

get the lawn-mower urgently

Our Litigation and Dispute Resolution team “has always had a big disputes focus, and the team is renowned for its assertive litigation style

2008?! Did astro-turf even exist in 2008! Chambers Global released the 2011 version of its insightful Asia Pacific guide over a week ago. This got us thinking about why Clayton Utz  would want to take visitors out to a long-forgotten meadow each time they come to the site wanting an honest snapshot of the firm’s litigation pasturage?

Our guess is that the firm wants to throw the practice in the greenhouse until it wins a case on behalf of the firm. Yes in the last couple of years, Clayton Utz has done what we would regard as an appauling job of defending the firm against a cabbage-patch full of allegations.

The most recent example of this occurred on February 18 2011 when Bridgette Styles, a former Clayton Utz lawyer, defeated her former firm on an oral costs application in an interlocutory proceeding relating to her highly-publicised spat against her old firm. Yes, this latest Clayton Utz loss is in addition to last week’s costs decision in which the firm got involved in litigation with a former client. Ms Styles, you’ll recall, is making a catalogue of allegations against her former firm that would make even the most resilient evergreen white with fright.

Justice Perram summarised those allegations as:

In substance, it is a sexual harassment suit coupled with a claim for victimisation. Some kind of liaison is alleged to have occurred between Ms Styles and another employee, Mr Izzo; it ended; sexual harassment is alleged against Mr Izzo and others who worked for the firm. Ms Styles was dissatisfied with the firm’s procedures; matters grew acrimonious; eventually Ms Styles was dismissed.

In the Supreme Court there is presently pending Ms Styles’ defamation case against Mr Izzo and Clayton Utz. She claims that Mr Izzo defamed her by saying, in effect, that she was using the sexual harassment allegations as a bargaining chip to permit her to remain in the section of Clayton Utz in which he worked. She also says she was defamed by a file note prepared by Mr Izzo recording what appears to have been a confrontation with Ms Styles.

An earlier FS post offering more dirt on the allegations is re-sprouted here. The question that Perram J was asked to consider in the 18/2/11 application was whether the Federal Court and Supreme Court proceedings should be joined together under the Commonwealth Cross-Vesting Act. What is interesting about the case is that the application was unopposed by Clayton Utz, yet the firm asserted an entitlement to payment of its costs. Yep, a firm with revenue of $442.5million last year sought the costs on an application it consented to!

The anonymous Clayton Utz spy who tipped us off to the case (thanks for this by the way – top work) raised the following questions:

Applying for costs for a consent application Styles won? And what were they doing consenting to this in the first place? Did Luis Izzo consent to it?

We don’t know the answers, but we agreed with Perram J’s remarks regarding the Clayton Utz costs application:

I can see no principled basis upon which to award [costs to Clayton Utz].

Nope, we can’t see a principled basis either. Perhaps even Clayton Utz apprecates that costs are generally reserved in such applications and the barrister representing the firm, Ms Kylie Nomchong, was left in the backyard by the firm on the issue? It sure looks like it might not be the first time, either. We received the following extraordinary insight from the same Clutz spy referenced above (again, thanks for your terrific work):

I’m not sure these comments made by Clutz’s Counsel Kylie Nomchong on
Insight last year bode well for the firm’s Defence to Styles’ termination, namely that,
as reported by you she allegedly called Luis Izzo a “slut” and a manwhore”:

“… KYLIE NOMCHONG: I think a lot of companies are over reacting at the moment.
JENNY BROCKIE: A lot of companies over reacting – in what way?
KYLIE NOMCHONG: Well I think certainly my experience is that low level sexual
harassment claims perhaps say inappropriate remarks in the work place, the knee jerk
reaction is now to come down in a very heavy-handed way, terminate people, when
really is answer is education, really the answer is counselling. And instead of
dealing with that at the work place and trying to educate people at the work place,
I think a lot of corporations are over reacting for the fear of the $37 million
claim.

JENNY BROCKIE: Have you got evidence of that?
KYLIE NOMCHONG: Yes.

JENNY BROCKIE: What sort of evidence?
KYLIE NOMCHONG: Claims that have come to me.

JENNY BROCKIE:   Claims that have come to you of people who have been dismissed because of their behaviour?

KYLIE NOMCHONG:  Indeed.

http://news.sbs.com.au/insight/episode/index/id/307#transcript

According to the AFR (10/12/10), the Clayton Utz defence alleges that Ms Styles acted in a “belligerent” fashion toward Mr Izzo, variously bellowing that Mr Izzo:

• was a “slut”
• was a “man-whore”; and
• had “slept with every girl in the firm”.

Sounds like a backyard slanging match to us. Not the sort of savagery that we think would warrant a “knee jerk
reaction … to come down in a very heavy-handed way”.

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