NEW YORK (Legal Newsline) - A New York lawyer is suing the law firm she tried to merge her business with, claiming defamation and that it spied on her email account.
In an April 4 lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Shirin Movahed Rakocevic has accused Koutsoudakis & Iakovou Law Group (KI Legal), Andreas Koutsoudakis, and Continental Casualty Company (CNA) of defamation, tortious interference with business relationships, unauthorized use of her name and likeness, and deceptive attorney advertising.
Rakocevic alleges that defamatory statements made by the defendants to third parties and her clients have caused substantial harm to her reputation and business. She also accuses them of infringing on her rights by using her name and likeness on their website without authorization.
In 2020, she started her own law practice focusing on start-ups and emerging companies' corporate legal needs. In January 2022, she merged her practice into KI Legal after being approached by one of its partners.
However, the relationship soured due to multiple alleged reasons, including KI Legal's inability to handle her business clients' legal needs. This resulted in Rakocevic spending more time managing these clients than focusing on business development as initially agreed upon, she says.
A former business associate filed what Rakocevic calls a frivolous lawsuit against her. The defendants falsely told that person that Rakocevic was terminated from her position as partner, the suit says.
"Defendants then went on to further defame Rakocevic by contacting her clients directly and repeating the false allegations made against her by Milford by telling her clients that she had defrauded a client out of her multimillion-dollar company by surreptitiously adding herself on as a director and then conducting a hostile takeover of Milford’s company and further stating that they should be concerned if she is working on their corporate matters, which as a corporate business attorney that was Rakocevic's main practice area," the suit claims.
The suit also claims KI Legal was "surreptitiously monitoring" her email, sneaking into a Zoom meeting and transcribing it without a client's knowledge.
Rakocevic is representing herself.