Employment Law | Retaliation | Arbitration
Appeals Court Revives Ex-LVMH Lawyer’s Retaliation Claim, but Not the Harassment Claims Behind It
LVMH Retaliation Forced Arbitration Court RulingTL;DR
- Andowah Newton, a longtime LVMH attorney, sued after alleging sexual harassment, an assault, and retaliation. Her harassment case was sent to private arbitration in 2021.
- In 2022, a new chief legal officer, Rodney Pratt, asked to meet with her alone to discuss settling. She alleges she declined or didn’t respond, and that she was fired on December 1, 2022.
- A federal district court dismissed her retaliation lawsuit. The appeals court reversed that part of the ruling, holding that her complaint plausibly alleges retaliation under federal, state, and city law.
- The appeals court also upheld the denial of her attempt to pull her arbitration claims into court. A 2022 federal law that bans forced arbitration of harassment claims didn’t reach claims that arose earlier.
- Nothing has been proven. The retaliation claim now returns to the district court, and the arbitrator has already ruled for LVMH on the claims that stayed in arbitration.
The ruling turns on whether saying nothing to a settlement offer can count as standing your ground, and on how a law meant to end forced arbitration was blocked by its own start date.
This article is based on a single document: the Second Circuit’s opinion in Newton v. LVMH. Because the case is at the motion-to-dismiss stage, the court assumed Newton’s allegations were true without deciding whether they are. Descriptions of what LVMH, Pratt, and others did come from Newton’s complaint unless stated otherwise. LVMH and Pratt’s factual denials are not set out in the opinion. No court has found either defendant liable for anything.
The Facts
Newton is a Black and Afro-Latina attorney who joined LVMH in 2015 as litigation counsel. She handled disputes for more than 25 of the company’s luxury brands and was later promoted to Vice President, Legal Affairs. Her complaint says she received positive performance reviews.
She alleges that soon after she arrived, Lloyd Doran, the company’s Director of Property and Facility Operations, began a pattern of sexual harassment. Her complaint describes one incident in September 2015 in which Doran allegedly pressed his body against hers in her office while reaching for her phone. She alleges that she told LVMH’s employment counsel, Frank Martinez, and that he changed the subject. After she emailed Doran in May 2018 telling him to stop, she says Martinez told her he “now ha[d] to report this.”
LVMH opened an internal investigation the next day. Newton alleges the investigator seemed more concerned about the company’s image than about what she had described, and closed the matter as a “misunderstanding.” She pushed for an outside investigator. According to the complaint, LVMH’s General Counsel, Louise Firestone, told her that as professional women there are “certain things we have to put up with.” An external investigator was hired and found no violation of company policy or the law. Newton alleges retaliation followed: a negative review after years of good ones, exclusion from matters, and resistance to her requests to work remotely during the pandemic.
Newton signs an arbitration agreement before starting at LVMH.
She sues in New York state court. An appellate court later compels the case into arbitration based on the 2014 agreement.
Newton starts arbitration against LVMH, Doran, Firestone, Martinez, CEO Anish Melwani, and HR executive Gena Smith.
She testifies before the House Judiciary Committee about the alleged harassment, assault, and retaliation.
President Biden signs the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act (EFAA). Newton is at the signing.
Pratt joins LVMH as Chief Legal Officer and replaces Firestone as Newton’s supervisor.
Pratt asks to meet one-on-one, without attorneys, to “discuss or negotiate a settlement.” The exact date isn’t specified.
Newton is told she is being terminated.
After an EEOC charge in May 2023, she files the federal retaliation suit.
The district court dismisses the retaliation claims and denies her request to add her arbitration claims.
The arbitrator rules for LVMH and the other arbitration defendants on all of Newton’s claims. A New York trial court later confirms the award.
The appeals court reverses the dismissal of the retaliation claims and affirms the denial of her request to amend.
The Meeting Request and the Firing
Newton’s federal lawsuit rests on what she says happened after Pratt arrived. In August 2022, she alleges, he asked to meet with her alone to talk about settling her claims. She describes being “scared and appalled.” The complaint says both that she declined and, elsewhere, that she didn’t respond. Pratt then allegedly became “infuriat[ed]” and began treating her differently.
The alleged changes include requiring her to get approval before speaking on any panel, inserting himself into some of her matters while cutting her out of others, ignoring her in weekly one-on-ones except to criticize her, and leaving her off a colleague’s farewell dinner and an employee sale. The complaint says that on December 1, 2022, Pratt fired her in a meeting attended by an HR director, told her the decision had nothing to do with her performance, and gave her until 5 p.m. to leave. It alleges he had scheduled the first mandatory in-person legal department meeting for that afternoon, so her colleagues would return to watch her pack while staff counted down the minutes. It also alleges LVMH’s usual practice was to fire executives on Friday mornings, out of view of colleagues.
The court treated an unanswered settlement invitation, made in the middle of a years-long discrimination fight, as something a reasonable employer could read as continued opposition.
The source document for this investigation is attached below.
