Courageous Clients

What I plan to do is profile several courageous clients. In the next following weeks, I intend to talk about whistleblowers, sexual harassment, racial, disability, and age discrimination victims who fought back. Sometimes as a lawyer it is easy to forget the emotional toll fighting the system is for a client. Without the courage of these special people, and others like them, harassment and discrimination would still be rampant in workplaces and American society in general.

I am excited about telling my clients' stories because I am so proud to have represented them. These stories are true stories of courage. The most gratifying part of my job as a plaintiffs' lawyer is to catch a glimpse of the joy and pride my clients must have experienced before they were victims of discrimination and/or retaliation.

Sometimes we here that someone files a discrimination case and, in essence, it is a trip to the bank. That is just not true. It takes a special person to fight back. I am so honored to represent them.

In the next few days and weeks I intend to write about my clients, people such as Kurt, a scientist, who bucked the system by refusing to violate federal laws in transporting radioactive substantives and the retaliation he suffered in lack of promotions and pay when he complained. I will write about my clients who reported to the not for profit board of physicians in charge of their employee that the executive director was stealing from the company, resulting in the termination of the whistleblowers. I will be recounting the tale of my client, the pharmaceutical representative, who complained about her employer forcing her to market a drug which had not yet been approved by the FDA and her subsequent termination.

I will also be telling the stories of numerous sexual harassment victims, with differing degrees of indignities inflicted upon them who had the wherewithal to fight back. Generally, women are not plagued by sexually inappropriate bosses as in the past because of the courage of people like the ones I represented.

I hope you will find these stories interesting. They are fascinating to me, and it has been gratifying to represent such courageous people. We can change the world even if it is just one case at a time.