Time's UP att'y switches sides
Bank’s unlikely harass-suit defender
A crusading women’s-rights lawyer and the leader of the Hollywoodbacked Time’s Up nonprofit is defending Goldman Sachs against a female whistleblower who claims she was fired for raising the alarm on sexual misconduct at the bank.
Roberta Kaplan — chair of the Time’s Up governing board of directors and a co-founder of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, entities devoted to helping sexual-harassment victims — is representing the Wall Street giant and two of its top lawyers in a lawsuit brought against them last month by Marla Crawford, a former associate general counsel for Goldman.
In legal papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Crawford, 57, claims she was canned after she tried to seek help for a female employee who was allegedly sexually preyed upon by Darrell Cafasso, 44, the company’s global head of litigation.
Crawford’s Nov. 12 suit against Goldman, Cafasso and general counsel Karen Seymour, 59, accuses them of “permitting a workplace where sexual harassment is covered up and the powerful are cloaked with immunity.”
When Crawford tried to speak up on behalf of the employee, identified as “Jane Doe” in court papers, “the result was a broadside attack on her performance and then terminating her after more than 10 years of exemplary performance,” court papers say.
Now critics say Kaplan, 54, who has long been an advocate for women’s rights, is trying to sweep the allegations under the rug, calling for confidential arbitration — a legal maneuver that been condemned by Time’s Up.
The group has long battled confidential agreements that allow “serial predators and harassers . . . to silence victims,” according to the group’s Web site.
In an NPR interview, Fatima Goss Graves, a co-founder of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund and president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, said, “Both arbitration agreements and nondisclosure agreements have been used to keep harassment and violence in the dark.”
David Gottlieb, Crawford’s Manhattan lawyer, noted the hypocrisy.
“Ms Kaplan’s decision to help Goldman Sachs force Ms. Crawford’s claims into a secretive, confidential arbitration forum is the antithesis of what the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund stands for,” he told The Post.
The Time’s Up organization, which includes Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Jessica Chastain and Alyssa Milano on its global board of directors, was set up by Hollywood producers and lawyers two years ago following Harvey Weinstein’s sexualharassment scandal and the birth of the #MeToo movement.
It helped Kaplan, Goss Graves and another lawyer, Tina Tchen, set up the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund to help women fight sexual harassment. The fund is managed by the National Women’s Law Center.
In 2018, its inaugural year, the Time’s Up organization contributed $312,001 to the fund while also spending the biggest chunk of its contributions — $1,407,032 — on executive salaries, The Post revealed last week.
Kaplan recently served as actress Amber Heard’s lawyer in a $50 million defamation case brought by Heard’s ex-husband, Johnny Depp. Kaplan withdrew from the case earlier this year, citing high travel and logistics costs.
Kaplan is also representing E. Jean Carroll, who is suing President Trump for defamation over his denial of her accusation that he sexually assaulted her.
The suit against Goldman alleges that the married Cafasso used his position “to romantically prey upon” the 30-something Jane Doe.
“Mr. Cafasso’s obsession with Jane Doe grew so strong that he even blamed her for his misconduct, telling her, ‘You’re a temptress,’ and ‘You’re the devil’s pawn,’ ” court papers say.
For her part, Seymour, who took home $8.37 million in 2019, allegedly tried to cover up the misconduct, telling a senior lawyer, “Let’s try to put this genie back in the bottle,” court papers say.
The bank hired an outside law firm to conduct “a bogus investigation” into the issue that “put secrecy above fact-finding,” court papers say.
Cafasso returned to work after two weeks and Doe, who was represented by women’s-rights attorney Gloria Allred, was “likely paid a sum of money and forced out of the bank,” court papers say.
Cafasso retaliated against Crawford, giving her low performance scores, decreasing her bonus and refusing to work with her, according to court documents.
Legal papers filed by Kaplan and her team allege that Crawford, a lawyer, voluntarily entered into a confidential arbitration agreement in exchange for a payout last year and left the firm because she refused to relocate to Dallas.
“Crawford’s allegations about that unrelated personnel matter, the resulting investigation, and the firm’s actions with respect to her employment are patently and demonstrably false,” court papers say.
A Time’s Up spokeswoman said the group has publicly supported the litigation against Goldman.
“We called out Goldman Sachs when this story was first reported,” Amanda Harrington said. “Ms. Kaplan’s decisions regarding this case are made in her personal professional capacity without any involvement from Time’s Up.”
Kaplan refused comment, but a spokesperson for her law firm, Kaplan Hecker & Fink, said, “As our recent court filing explains, this case was brought by a plaintiff seeking to exploit her tangential awareness of an unrelated personnel matter . . . by publicly exposing another woman’s personal experience and by groundlessly complaining about the steps taken by the general counsel of Goldman Sachs.”