The Things People Say and Do

One of the many changes that have happened since I first started practicing law in 1975, is the appearance of services which monitor the filings of new lawsuits and send summaries to law firms. One such excellent service is Courthouse News Service, which actually does a lot more than just prepare summaries of new lawsuits. In the first paragraph of their "about us" they note:

Courthouse News Service is a nationwide news service for lawyers and the news media. Based in Pasadena, California, Courthouse News focuses on civil litigation, from the date of filing through the appellate level. Unlike other Internet-based publishers that simply aggregate information prepared by other content providers, Courthouse News publishes its own original news content prepared by its staff of reporters and editors based across the country.

In any event, one of their recent reports of a filing of a lawsuit by a pro se plaintiff in Harris County, Texas was the following:

Plaintiff points to  ...  an executive assistant, as the source of such office hostility that plaintiff gave her an article titled "De-clawing cattiness at work." She was fired the next day. She wants $600,000 damages.

And just in case you are wondering, it is at least theoretically possible that this did happen as a Google search reveals a 2005 article by Executive Coach Kay Cannon, De-clawing Cattiness in the Workplace.

Apparently, no matter how good the advice, it was not appreciated.