Davis Polk Says Black Lawyer’s Suit Defamatory, Wants Sanctions

Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP’s planned bid for sanctions against a Black lawyer and his attorney for allegedly defamatory statements regarding a former partner is set for a pre-motion conference in New York federal court Feb. 1.

The defendants allegedly refuse to remove the statements from the Black lawyer’s race discrimination lawsuit.

Kaloma Cardwell sued in November 2019, accusing Davis Polk of discriminating against him because of his race and retaliating against him for complaining about racial bias at the law firm.

But the latest version of the complaint filed by Cardwell and his attorney defames one of the seven former corporate/mergers and acquisitions group partners he is suing along with the firm by wrongfully accusing her of backdating her 2016 reviews of Cardwell’s performance “for purposes of litigation,” Davis Polk told the U.S. District Court in a letter signaling its intent to file a motion seeking sanctions against both Cardwell and his counsel.

Cardwell’s second amended complaint also falsely accuses the same former partner, Sophia Hudson, of asking him to “recommend a Black restaurant,” according to the letter.

Judge Gregory H. Woods granted Davis Polk’s request for a pre-motion conference, which was opposed by Cardwell.

The firm says it gave Cardwell and his attorney multiple opportunities to withdraw the defamatory allegations, but that the pair refused despite discovery in the case illustrating that the allegations are false. That includes emails contemporaneous to Hudson’s performance reviews that make clear the reviews were never subsequently altered, the firm says.

Instead of deleting the unsupported contention that Hudson had “retroactively created” the reviews, Cardwell proposed to replace “the false allegation with a whole new sixteen-paragraph conspiracy theory that would ordinarily require leave of court,” Davis Polk says.

Advancing such baseless allegations against another member of the bar “is the type of situation for which Rule 11 was created,” the firm says, referring to the section of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure under which its motion will be brought.

Davis Polk already has pending a sanctions application for nearly $100,000 against Cardwell and his attorney for discovery abuses that Woods found the pair guilty of in a Jan. 15 bench ruling.

The letter seeking the pre-motion hearing was signed by former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh C. Johnson. Johnson is now a partner with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, which represents Davis Polk, Hudson, and the other individual defendants.

David Jeffries of New York represents Cardwell.

The case is Cardwell v. Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, S.D.N.Y., No. 1:19-cv-10256, request for pre-motion conference granted 1/25/21.