DES MOINES, Iowa (Legal Newsline) – Failed discrimination litigation has turned into a battle between the plaintiff and the lawyers she says botched her case and charged her more than $400,000.
Nancy Heisler sued The Employment Law Group and lawyers Scott Oswald and Kellee Kruse in November in Iowa state court, and those defendants removed the case to federal court on Feb. 12.
She says the firm took her case in 2014 but did not do so on a contingent-fee basis, as is common in employee age discrimination cases. Ultimately, Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company was granted summary judgment.
Nationwide said it hired persons just as qualified as Heisler but she said she had proof it did not. Her lawyers failed to raise or develop her argument, she says.
“Defendants failed to provide the court with the required showing that Ms. Heisler’s qualification were so superior as to permit a jury to infer discrimination even though this evidence was in Defendants’ possession,” her new lawyers wrote.
She says The Employment Law Group failed to include evidence of pay data and comparators in support of her Equal Pay Act claim, failed to include relevant evidence in the more than 1,000 pages it contributed to the summary judgment record and abandoned some of her claims without consulting her.
“Since Defendants did not have her attend oral argument, Ms. Heisler did not learn that her claims had been abandoned until she reviewed Magistrate Judge Adams’ Report and Recommendation,” the suit says.
She ended up paying the firm $417,895.42 for their work, which included a failed appeal.