Goldman Sachs, Former In-House Attorney End Retaliation Suit
Marla Crawford has filed to dismiss a suit that alleged she was fired by the investment firm for trying to bring information on sexual harassment to light.
A former in-house attorney at Goldman Sachs has filed to dismiss a suit that alleged she was fired by the investment firm for trying to bring information on sexual harassment to light. The case had previously been sent to arbitration.
On Thursday, Marla Crawford’s attorneys filed a stipulation of discontinuance with the New York Supreme Court. The stipulation notes the case has been dismissed with prejudice and each side will bear its own costs and attorney fees.
It is unclear from the docket whether the case has been settled.
Crawford’s attorneys, Doug Wigdor and David Gottlieb of Wigdor Law in New York, declined to comment on the case. Roberta Kaplan, of Kaplan Hecker & Fink in New York, who served as lead counsel for the defendants, did not respond to a request for comment.
Crawford filed the lawsuit in the New York Supreme Court in October 2020.
She claimed she had information about the global head of litigation, Darrell Cafasso, allegedly sexually harassing a junior employee in the legal department, but when she tried to report the information she had to internal investigators, she was shut down and later fired.
In addition to Goldman Sachs and Cafasso, Crawford named Karen Seymour, the bank’s then-general counsel, alleging that she swept the information Crawford brought under the rug. Seymour has since left the bank and now serves as a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell.
Seymour did not respond to a request for comment. She was replaced at Goldman Sachs by Kathryn Ruemmler as the bank’s general counsel.
After a back and forth between the state and federal court, a New York Supreme Court judge ruled that Crawford’s claims fell under the arbitration agreement she signed with the bank.
Once Kaplan became involved with the case, the plaintiff’s lawyers at Wigdor raised the question of whether she should be taking such a case given her role on the board of Time’s Up.
Recently, Kaplan resigned from the Time’s Up board, following a report that she reviewed a letter Gov. Andrew Cuomo wrote regarding an accuser.
(Photo: Nicky Loh, Bloomberg)