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Court Orders TransPerfect Co-CEO to Pay Paul, Weiss Client $7.1 Million in Sanctions
- Client News
- August 24, 2016
Practices
Paul, Weiss client Elizabeth Elting and Phillip Shawe are the co-founders and co-CEOs of Transperfect Global, Inc., a leading document-translation and discovery-services company. Since 2014, they have been in litigation in Delaware and New York over the control of the company.
During the dispute, Shawe entered Elting's office, removed the hard drive from her computer, and read her personal emails -- including Elting's privileged emails with her attorneys. When this came to light, Elting hired Paul, Weiss. Discovery revealed that to cover up his misconduct, Shawe deleted and tried to destroy 40,000 files on his laptop after the Court ordered a forensic examination of the laptop; failed to safeguard and produce text messages on his cell phone, which he claimed was destroyed when it fell in a cup of Diet Coke; and lied under oath at trial, in deposition testimony, by affidavit, and in interrogatory responses. On July 20, Chancellor Andre Bouchard ordered that Shawe should be sanctioned, awarding Elting her legal fees for the sanctions motion and one third of her legal fees in the underlying corporate-control lawsuit. On August 19, as reported in the New York Law Journal, Chancellor Bouchard ordered Shawe to pay Elting $7.1 million as sanctions.
The Paul, Weiss team included, among others, litigation partners Robert Atkins and Stephen Lamb, of counsel Gerard Harper and counsel Robert Kravitz.