The Inbox - February 15, 2013

This week in suits by suits:

• St. Louis-based Reliance Bank founder Jerry Von Rohr sued the bank for more than $400,000 in back pay and benefits, seeking a declaratory judgment that the bank is not prohibited from paying his severance package under the federal government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), which otherwise limits payments of so-called "golden parachutes."
• Maximillian Coreth, former managing director for Lehman Brothers, appealed a bankruptcy court's dismissal of his $19.6 million breach of contract lawsuit against Barlcays Capital Inc. to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.  Coreth is arguing that Barclays assumed the obligations under his employment contract with Lehman Brothers when Barclays purchased Lehman Brothers in September of 2008.  Barclays successfully argued to the bankruptcy court and the U.S. district court that its Asset Purchase Agreement did not grant third-party beneficiaries any rights.  We'll discuss this case (and these important issues) in depth in the coming days.
• A federal district court judge split the baby in a lawsuit brought by former Detective William Hawkins against the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, upholding the Department's general policy regarding its employees' disclosures of information to the media under the First Amendment, but found that the policy was unconstitutional as applied to Hawkins when he was disciplined for speaking to the Washington Post in 2009.
• A Texas state appellate court held that the architectural firm Nortex Foundation Designs, Inc. of Fort Worth, Texas wrongfully terminated a draftsman, Adam Young, who objected to copying designs that he felt infringed upon others' copyrights, holding that Young could not be fired for refusing to follow orders for which he had a "good faith belief" to be criminal.
• In a pair of excellent articles we think will be of interest to many of our readers, the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation (1) tackled the critical question:  "How Costly Is Corporate Bankruptcy for Top Executives?" and (2) hosted a survey piece by Richard J. Sandler, a partner at Davis Polk, entitled "Recent Developments in Executive Compensation Litigation."  Both are well worth a read.
• A former schoolteacher, Teresa Kemmer, has sued the Cumberland, Tennessee County Board of Education in federal court, alleging sexual harassment and retaliation pursuant to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Ms. Kemmer's complaint alleges, among other things, that after she reported the alleged harassment to her supervisor, she requested to transfer schools but was told "that if she wanted a job she needed to stay where she was."
• Finally, here's one that's just bizarre.  In October of 2012, Oxbow Carbon executive Kirby Martensen filed a federal lawsuit against his former employer billionaire William Koch; he's supposedly the "quiet" one, unlike his more high-profile brothers Charles and David (although William donated $2 million to a Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney's "Restore Our Future" SuperPAC in 2012).  Martensen's lawsuit alleges that Koch kidnapped him, imprisoned him at Bear Ranch in Aspen, Colorado, and interrogated him in the company of a Gunnison County deputy allegedly on hand to "make sure he didn't run away."  Koch is back in the news after having filed a motion to dismiss in mid-January of this year; Martensen says that local police officers support his version of events.  You can bet we'll continue to monitor this case.