Morrison & Foerster sign. (Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM)

A lawyer for one of the Jane Doe plaintiffs pursuing claims that Morrison & Foerster discriminates against pregnant women and mothers contends the law firm is seeking to damage her client's reputation by asking her new employer for personnel records.

Sanford Heisler Sharp's Deborah Marcuse, who represents the plaintiff referred to as Jane Doe 4 in the lawsuit, is seeking to quash the subpoena MoFo served on her client's new law firm, whose name is redacted from a copy of the subpoena filed with the court Monday. MoFo is seeking Jane Doe 4′s personnel file, including documents relating to her job performance, disciplinary record, compensation, and benefits, and any documents related to her recruitment and hiring at the new firm.

Marcuse wrote in a discovery letter brief filed jointly Monday with MoFo's lawyers at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher that the subpoena was "both premature and vastly overbroad—redolent of an improper purpose."  Jane Doe 4, who was among the second wave of former MoFo lawyers to sue the firm in the high-profile lawsuit earlier this year, claims she was informed that she was being terminated less than two months before her due date.

MoFo previously asked for sanctions against both Jane Doe 4, who practiced in a California office at the firm, and Sanford Heisler, claiming they brought claims that were "knowingly baseless" due to a release the plaintiff signed on her termination. But U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley of the Northern District of California, who is overseeing the case, denied the sanctions motion shortly after it was filed, finding that the plaintiff could sufficiently allege she signed the release under economic duress.

In the latest dispute between the parties, MoFo's lawyers contend that the documents they are seeking from Jane Doe 4′s new firm are relevant to the plaintiff's claim that MoFo disparaged her to potential employers after she left MoFo. Marcuse, however, contends her client hasn't claimed that MoFo has interfered with her current employer. She landed at her current firm, Marcuse wrote, on the recommendation of another former MoFo attorney now at the new firm, who is herself a mother, after three other pending offers failed to materialize. Marcuse wrote that "a plaintiff does not expose her current job record to carte blanche scrutiny merely by filing suit against her prior employer."

"Nothing here warrants forcing Jane Doe 4's current employer into this litigation as an unwilling participant with tangible discovery burdens," Marcuse wrote. "MoFo should not be able to launch such a damaging assault on Plaintiff's job security and career prospects, and fire off a warning to similarly-situated employees, on such a slender reed," she wrote.

MoFo's lawyers, however, contend that since the plaintiff has said that performance concerns raised for dismissing her were a pretext, the firm is "entitled to probe whether her performance is also viewed as subpar at her current law firm."

"This case is now positioned such that a very narrow disclosure of Jane Doe's identity is warranted to avoid tying Morrison's hands in its ability to defend itself," wrote Gibson Dunn's Michele Maryott. "There is no alternative means to obtain the information, which is relevant to her claims and Morrison's defenses," Maryott wrote.

Neither Marcuse nor Maryott immediately responded to requests for comment Tuesday.

Read the Discovery Letter Brief: