September 10, 2025

Discrimination and Self-Representation and Arbitration, Oh My!

By Laura Trachtman

A former partner at Katten Muchin Rosenman, LLP is suing his prior firm and two of its partners, Noah Heller and Michael Verde, for $67 million dollars, alleging, among other things, age discrimination in firing. This case is just the kind of borderline absurd scandalous legal drama that gives me life, and in three specific areas: discrimination, representation, and arbitration. 

First, age discrimination is, IMO, one of the hardest discrimination-based allegations to demonstrate. Courts have held that, unlike other types of discrimination, one of the best ways to demonstrate age-based discrimination is by recounting comments rooted in age-related bigotry. Now, if you’ve ever handled a race-or gender-based discrimination case, you’ll know that most people aren’t stupid enough to make statements about a person’s gender or race. “Well, we’re going to give this position to a white person because we, as white people, feel more comfortable among other white people” or “You, being female, simply aren’t as emotionally stable as a man” are comments that are almost never heard these days, although the sentiments behind them certainly continue to thrive. However, this is not the case in age-based discrimination, as alleged in the 129-page Addendum to the Complaint.  “Heller and Verde told me in an in-person meeting to tell me to resign from the firm, the firm and its malpractice insurer concluded that it presented too great a malpractice risk to the firm to allow lawyers close to retirement to continue to handle client relationships,” says Stewart B. Herman, Esq., the plaintiff, who is representing himself. The Addendum also alleged that Katten’s CEO, Heller, previously bragged to Herman that he, the CEO, secured that position by leveraging his youth against those other, older candidates, who are likely to retire more quickly and thus be less invested in the Firm. 

This moves us quickly to our next interesting point: Herman is representing himself. This also almost never happens amongst BigLaw attorneys — or attorneys, full stop. Plenty of plaintiffs represent themselves pro se, but they tend to be, in my experience, cuckoo bananas.  In fairness, plenty of lawyers are also cuckoo bananas, but that’s another post for another day. It does remind me of a quote from The Addams Family movie, spoken by Gomez Addams, brilliantly portrayed by the late actor Raul Julia:  “They say that a man who represents himself has a fool for a client. Well, with God as my witness, I am that fool!” (I’m not calling Herman a fool. I’m just repeating what Gomez said.)

Most recently, in response to a motion filed by Katten to compel arbitration, the Magistrate Judge addressed the parties’ arbitration agreement. While the Court granted the defendant’s motion to stay the matter pending arbitration, in a fascinating twist, the Court admitted that it could not force the parties to go to arbitration:  “Although the Court has the power, and obligation, to stay the instant action, it cannot affirmatively order the parties to arbitrate.” This is because the arbitration agreement between Katten and Herman says the arbitration must occur in Chicago, but the Federal Arbitration Act does not allow a court to order parties to arbitration outside of the district in which the court sits. In this instance, that’s the Southern District of New York, which obviously does not include Chicago.

So the parties have several options: agree to arbitrate in New York (which Herman has already declined to agree to), agree to arbitrate in Chicago (ditto), or sit and wait until someone changes their mind or Congress changes the law. I anticipate that Herman will have some soul-searching to do, trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea as he is.