Partner Raj Davé has filed suit against his former firm, alleging that Darby & Darby did not return working capital contributions he made before he left to join Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman earlier this year.
Davé’s complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia last week, states he made an initial $50,000 contribution to the firm’s working capital after joining as a non-equity partner in April 2007. The contribution was made, the complaint says, with the understanding that it would be returned if Davé left the firm. Davé practiced in Darby’s Washington office.
According to the two-page complaint, Davé had made a total of $92,000 in capital contributions by the time he left Darby & Darby in January 2009. He is suing for breach of contract and seeks the return of those contributions.
Davé now practices in Pillsbury’s intellectual property group in its Washington and McLean, Va. offices, where he represents biotechnology clients in patent prosecution and dispute resolution matters. He declined to comment beyond saying that his lawyers, Philip Harvey and Adrien Pickard of Fiske & Harvey in Alexandria, Va., had advised him not to discuss the suit.
Darby & Darby managing partner Robert Sullivan Jr. did not return calls for comment.
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