Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog
Sara Tirschwell, an investor who had been hired by TCW in 2016 to raise and run a new distressed debt fund for the giant asset-management firm, suddenly found herself without a job on December 14, 2017. She had been called into a meeting with the firm’s chief compliance officer and general counsel and informed that she had unethically told an employee in another department about a potential deal. According to TCW, it was Tirschwell’s fifth violation in 18 months and grounds for termination.
Tirschwell said the firm’s chief executive offered her a $500,000 severance package on the condition that she sign an agreement promising not to sue the firm. Tirschwell did not take the deal because she didn’t think her termination had anything to do with compliance – she claims it was retaliation.
Nine days before this meeting, Tirschwell had sent an email to the head of human resources, saying that her boss, Jess Ravich, had pressured her into having sex with him several times since she started working for the firm and that he had groped her in the office. When she put a stop to it, he allegedly sabotaged her job by refusing to support her fund. The general counsel and head of HR interviewed Tirschwell about her complaint and promised to investigate. Instead, she claims she was fired in retaliation for bringing harassment claims to the attention of management. The company claimed that she knew she was about to be fired for poor performance and simply created grounds to claim retaliation especially given the many holes in her story and gaps in her memory and failure to meet performance and money raising goals. Continue reading ›