[Scott Graham]
A legal fight between a small, politically connected law firm and a former associate who happens to be the wife of Judge Gerardo Sandoval has turned ugly.
Amy Harrington accuses Hallisey & Johnson and its name partners, Democratic fundraiser Jeremiah Hallisey and Charlene Haught Johnson, of breaching their employment agreement with her and blocking her fee petitions. She also says in her complaint she was sexually harassed, though she does not say by whom.
Hallisey and Johnson, meanwhile, say Harrington was removing client files and scheming to set up a competing practice even as Hallisey was raising money for Sandoval’s 2008 judicial election campaign and recruiting political heavyweights for his induction ceremony.
“Plaintiffs were invited to defendant Amy Harrington’s wedding. Later, during the course of her employment, defendant asked plaintiffs to be the Godparents to her second child,” states Hallisey & Johnson's complaint. Then in 2008, “while at the same time secretly arranging for office space for her planned private practice to be in competition with plaintiffs, they prevailed upon plaintiff Jeremiah Hallisey to be master of ceremonies and to speak at Gerrardo [sic] Sandoval’s Judicial Installation and to induce Attorney General Edmund G. Brown to attend and to speak as well.”
Sandoval is not a named defendant and isn’t accused of doing anything wrong. He referred a question about the case Friday to Harrington’s attorney, Robert Moore, who described the litigation as “a simple partnership dispute … nothing more, nothing less.”
The entire San Francisco Superior Court bench has recused from the case, which has been assigned to retired Los Angeles Judge Edward Ross.
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