No Quick End for Sexual Harassment Case Against Jackson & Campbell

Looks like there won’t be any quick end to the sexual harassment case filed against Jackson & Campbell, partner Robert Rider Jr., and the firm's current and former leadership. The defendants’ motions to dismiss were denied in D.C. Superior Court on Nov. 16th by Judge Judith Bartnoff. The plaintiff in the case, former Jackson & Campbell partner Elisa Eisenberg, claims that Rider groped her at a party in June 2006 hosted by the firm for American International Group, a major client of the firm. According to court papers, the incident was so traumatic that Eisenberg says it amounted to career-ending assault and battery. Legal Times first wrote about the case here.

Judge Bartnoff was considering several motions filed by Rider and Jackson & Campbell, as well as by the firm’s current president, Richard Bryan, and its former president, James Schaller. Bartnoff had already denied a motion to dismiss Eisenberg’s claim of intentional infliction of emotional distress at a hearing on October 11. But the judge took more than a month to deny motions to dismiss Eisenberg’s claims of sex discrimination and employer retaliation.

In her order denying the motions, Judge Bartnoff expressed some doubt about whether Eisenberg will ultimately prevail. Still, she found that dismissing any of her claims at this point would be premature: “The plaintiff is not required to prove her case against the law firm defendants in the Complaint, as opposed to alleging a sufficient legal basis to state a claim for relief, which she certainly has done.”

Rider did not move to dismiss Eisenberg’s claims of assault and battery.