Summary: A former employment attorney for the semiconductor company filed a lawsuit earlier this month claiming sex bias that led to her intentional lay off last year.
Former Broadcom Corp employee, Jennifer Davies, has sued the company for gender discrimination. Davies was the company’s leading in-house employment attorney. In her suit, she claims that female employees were called “kittens with balls of yarn” and required to “sashay” through a meeting of men whistling and laughing at them.
The company’s legal team, led by Lynne Hermle and Joseph Liburt with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe has been rushing to suppress the lawsuit. They filed motions to dismiss, compel arbitration, and attempts to keep parts of the complaint that include accusations of international fraud confidential.
Davies joined Broadcom nine years ago as the first employment lawyer for the company. She claims they promoted a men’s club atmosphere and strongly encouraged her to hire men for a position in a legal group. The management went out of their way to prevent her from getting a promotion to vice president that she was more than qualified for. She says she went to company executives several times about the discrimination but they instead laid her off.
Hermle refutes the claims and states Davies never complained about discrimination. She says the plaintiff was laid off during a large layoff not because of her being a whistleblower, like Davies claims. Davies continues to claim in her suit that she was convinced by Broadcom executives to move to human resources with a promotion to vice president soon to follow. Instead, a man was hired to fill her employment law position and made vice president. Eventually, Davies was moved to a mobile project that was soon after shut down, leaving her without a job. The other two employees to be laid off were also women.
Davies conducted an internal investigation while in human resources where she claims she discovered evidence of a Broadcom executive and employees engaging in fraudulent behavior. She believes this was another reason that she was laid off.
Hermle’s team recently defeated a similar gender discrimination case against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The allegations in this case could prove to be just as powerful as the Kleiner case.
Read these other cases of gender discrimination,
Gender Discrimination Suit Filed against WilmerHale
Ex-Associate Accuses Firm of Gender Discrimination
Gender Discrimination Lawsuit Filed Against Twitter
Source: http://www.therecorder.com/id=1202730748768/Former-InHouse-Lawyer-Accuses-Broadcom-of-Gender-Bias
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