It is pretty well known in legal circles that Yahoo! is facing a discrimination suit by a laid-off attorney – a trend we’ve commented on previously. The Recorder summarizes the case nicely:
One of its [Yahoo!'s] own lawyers — a black woman named Eulonda Skyles — claims her bosses discriminated against her after she came back from a 2005 maternity leave. Skyles alleges she was passed over for promotions and relegated to employee slip-and-fall-type cases instead of the big-ticket litigation she had worked on before having a kid, until she left (says Yahoo) or was fired (says Skyles) in 2007.
Paul Cane (Dartmouth AB ’76, Boalt JD ’79) of Paul Hastings is representing Yahoo!. Sounds like a run of the mill case so far, right? The Recorder notes that the case provides
a rare look at the tensions that can arise in a legal department around race and gender and the way that a department responds. It’s unusual because in-house departments are thought to be much more diverse and women-friendly than law firms. And though an internal investigation found the charges “meritless,” Yahoo subsequently made changes to its legal department that appear to address some of the issues raised by Skyles.
What The Recorder didn’t seem to catch is that the transparency isn’t exactly benign.
Turns out Skyles may not have been the only person fired as a result of this kerfuffle.
According to Valleywag, the EEOC papers were leaked by Jill Nash, Yahoo!’s former PR boss, who got them from none other than Yahoo!’s GC, Michael Callahan (a Skadden alum, as it happens).
According to an email Skyles sent to [Yahoo! CEO Carol] Bartz [(who is zealously anti-leak)], that leak was a violation of both the confidentiality of the settlement and labor laws restricting what an employer may say publicly about an employee’s performance.
Skyles sent the email the morning of February 2 — more than two weeks before Elinson’s story would be published — demanding that Bartz take action against the person who leaked the document.
That afternoon, Nash announced her departure from Yahoo. A flack always chooses words carefully; in her goodbye email, Nash did not say she had “quit” or “resigned” — only that she was leaving. She had no new job lined up, nor did she disclose any future plans.
Looks like Google isn’t the only search engine having a rough week.
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