Carothers

I. BACKGROUND

A. Carothers’s Tenure at CDF Our recitation of the facts concerning Carothers’s tenure at CDF is as alleged in his operative complaint. Carothers, a Black man, became an equity partner in CDF in the early 2000s.1 In 2017, Carothers began suffering from health issues. In or around the fall of 2018, Carothers obtained a diagnosis for his condition, and learned it would require surgery. When he disclosed his symptoms to CDF, he received comments like, “‘That’s what happens when you get old.’”

1 When Carothers joined the firm, CDF stood for Carlton DiSante & Freudenberger. In 2011, CDF changed its name to “Carothers DiSante & Freudenberger” in recognition of Carothers’s contributions to the firm.

2 Later that year, CDF did not give Carothers his year-end payout, which typically represented about 40 percent of his annual compensation. When asked why, CDF said it withheld the compensation because one of Carothers’s clients, for whom he achieved a favorable result at trial in Vista, had only paid about half of its bill (the Vista matter). Carothers had not seen a payout withheld due to a collections issue before. Carothers was out of the office on medical leave from…