Gun vics vs. lawyers

Sex claims in suit

A law firm already accused of using survivors of the Pulse nightclub massacre to lure Las Vegas mass-shooting victims as clients is being sued for sending its Orlando clients on an ambulancechasing road trip with a sexhungry employee.

The Philadelphia-based Conrad Benedetto law firm was retained by Javier Nava and Brian Nuñez shortly after the 2016 mass shooting in Orlando, which killed 49 innocent people. But rather than represent the men in a legal case, the firm sent them on an “exploitative” road trip to recruit victims of the 2017 Vegas shooting, according to their New Jersey state lawsuit. The firm has an office in New Jersey.

What’s more, the men were accompanied by office manager John Groff, who had been accused of trading sex for legal services before, the suit says.

Nava and Nuñez initially thought the trip would be “therapeutic.” Instead they were sexually harassed and treated like employees, with Groff demanding they “do [their] job and get other people to sign up,” according to the suit.

When they rejected Groff ’s sexual advances, he threatened to stop paying for the food and lodging for the trip, the suit says.

In screen shots of text messages attached to the lawsuit, Groff repeatedly asks Nava for oral sex, saying he is “hungry as s---t,” “And I want to eat YOU!”

Groff also sent Nava pornographic images of men performing oral sex, including “a picture of a man apparently performing oral sex on Defendant Groff,” the suit states.

Lawyers Matthew Luber of McOmber & McOmber and Brian Claypool of the Claypool Law Firm say the Benedetto law firm should have known Groff was a problem because it had been slapped with a lawsuit in 2016 accusing the office manager of trading sex for legal services.

Neither Groff nor Benedetto returned a request for comment.