Fired BigLaw associate alleges evaluation was defamatory, detractors caused emotional distress.
Dassie filed the suit Oct. 19 in New York state court.
Reuters, Law360 and Above the Law had coverage of the suit.
Dassie’s year-end evaluation was affected by an incident involving a WilmerHale counsel, Anh-Khoa Tran, and Dassie’s work on PowerPoint slides, the suit said.
While preparing for trial with Tran and others, Dassie implemented some changes to the slides immediately and made a note for the litigation-support vendor to add other changes.
Dassie made a change for Tran that reverted to the original after going to the vendor. When Tran discovered that his change wasn’t there, he walked up to Dassie and said he should always go through the litigation-support vendor for all changes in the future, the suit said. Dassie responded that he would take the counsel’s suggestion into consideration going forward.
Tran insisted and Dassie repeated that he would take the command into consideration, pointing out that there would be many instances in which it wouldn’t be prudent. After going back and forth several times, Tran began “publicly chastising” Dassie in a crowded room, the suit said.
“Tran was getting increasingly angry,” the suit said. “His lower lip was quivering. To avoid the continuing optics of being publicly reprimanded in the middle of the crowded room and to de-escalate the situation and get Tran to walk away, [Dassie] retorted ‘too bad, so sad,” the suit said.
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