Sex novelist lawyer 'Deidre Dare' sues firm for £22m

 
Will Stewart17 April 2012

A lawyer who posted an erotic novel on the internet has won the go-ahead to sue a top City law firm for almost £22 million over alleged sexual harassment.

Deidre Clark, whose pen name is Deidre Dare, is seeking damages after being sacked by Allen & Overy’s office in Moscow.

A London employment tribunal refused to hear her unfair dismissal claim last year, saying it was outside its jurisdiction. But now a US judge has given permission for Ms Clark, 46, to take legal action in New York.

Ms Clark, who earned £126,000 a year before bonuses, claims she was sacked after “sexual persecution”. She alleges that in 2008 she “engaged in sexual activity with Tony Humphrey, the partner supervising her work in Moscow, while she was intoxicated at a party in the home of a colleague”.

She claims he later stopped giving her work assignments and “sought to engage Clark in sexual conversations”, according to the ruling from a New York Supreme Court judge.

Ms Clark was then sacked. She claims she was told it was because of the novel she was posting on her website about the debauched sex-and-drugs lifestyle of highly paid Western expatriates in Moscow. She denied it was based on the lives of her workmates there.

In the book, the heroine, Dasha, states: “I drink too much. I do too many drugs. I f**k around. I waste days and time. I spend too much time at parties. There’s a shorter way of saying all that: ‘I live in Moscow’.”

Allen & Overy said when Ms Clark was fired that her novel was “unacceptable and totally at odds with the standards of behaviour that we expect”.

The firm asked the judge to dismiss all of her claims and bar a court case in New York, where Ms Clark, an American citizen, now lives. But the judge ruled in her favour on seven out of eight counts.

Allen & Overy said: “We have always been entirely satisfied that the termination of Ms Clark’s employment was justified and lawful. We remain committed to defending Ms Clark’s claim vigorously.”

Ms Clark, who represented herself in court, said: “You can’t imagine how great it feels. Pure joy, really. And it’s not just a win. I devastated them.”

She will be represented by high-profile US lawyer Casey Greenfield.

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