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Sunday, July 15, 2018 10:44:10 AM
Fallen Latham Chair Bill Voge Rose From Iowa Farm to Big Law Pinnacle
Bill Voge's life story seemed like the quintessential American dream, as he followed a trajectory from Iowa farm boy to the top of Latham & Watkins before he abruptly resigned amid misconduct allegations.
It had been two days since William Voge was publicly disgraced, and the 61-year-old globe-trotting lawyer couldn’t sleep.
His household, his colleagues and opponents, everybody it appeared, knew in regards to the sexually specific texts he exchanged final yr with a lady he had by no means met in particular person, and nonetheless hasn’t. The fallout scandalized the authorized career and would price Mr. Voge his job at Latham & Watkins LLP, one of many highest grossing regulation companies on the earth, the place he was chairman.
Mr. Voge slipped out of his $5 million home in Solana Seashore, Calif., that evening in March. He went to a close-by bar the place he regarded over a whole bunch of messages on his telephone—some sympathetic, others shaming. His spouse and grown daughter had requested hours earlier when it could all die down.
On a enterprise journey in November, Mr. Voge spent two nights sexting with a married mom of three. After the lady informed others, together with on the regulation agency, Mr. Voge threatened authorized motion, which solely provoked extra hassle.
“I used to be irrational, I used to be silly and I used to be reckless,” Mr. Voge informed The Wall Road Journal.
He sat on the bar that evening ingesting India pale ale, and his ideas grew darker as he went over in his thoughts all that occurred. He might by no means perceive suicide, he mentioned, till he skilled such deep emotions of disgrace firsthand.
Mr. Voge and the Chicago-area girl, Andrea Vassell, by no means had a bodily relationship. The repercussions of their entanglement have however been pricey.
Companions at Latham, which counts such shoppers as Citibank and
American Airways, earn a median of greater than $Three million a yr. Mr. Voge, who grew up on a farm in Iowa, had made twice that earlier than his abrupt departure in March from a regulation agency the place he spent his whole 35-year profession.
Ms. Vassell, 43, is underneath investigation by the police division in Naperville, Sick., the place she lives, for alleged harassment by digital means, a misdemeanor offense.
She denied wrongdoing, and mentioned in an interview that telling others what occurred between her and Mr. Voge wasn’t against the law. She mentioned Mr. Voge tried to bully her into silence, which he denied.
Mr. Voge went to the police, he mentioned, as a result of Ms. Vassell bombarded him and others with harassing emails about their liaison that included untruths.
The lawyer and suburban mother left behind a protracted file of their digital relationship—a monthslong cascade of emails and texts that tracked a roller-coaster path from courtesy to intimacy to anger, in keeping with exchanges considered by the Journal.
Mr. Voge and Ms. Vassell say they really feel betrayed by the opposite. They proceed to obsess over what occurred, dealing with strained marriages and humiliation. They accuse one another of mendacity. Each say they are going to be vindicated when the whole set of textual content exchanges is revealed by police or in courtroom.
Mr. Voge mentioned he has mulled over his therapists’ theories that chemical substances in his “heathen, sex-oriented” mind took over his extra rational aspect whereas he was away from his spouse in Chicago. “I feel that if you happen to commit any sin,” he mentioned, “the worst factor you are able to do is deny your sin.”
For her half, Ms. Vassell mentioned she has an issue with sending impulsive emails. “Don’t you assume we each may very well be at fault?” she mentioned.
Probability encounter
It occurred that Ms. Vassell met Mr. Voge by the New Canaan Society, a nationwide group of Christian businessmen. “The pressures and temptations for males are nice,” the group says on its web site. “NCS provides guys a spot to type deep friendships.”
Ms. Vassell started speaking with the group a few yr in the past. Her emails reached the board, which incorporates company executives, funding managers and evangelical leaders. She wrote that the founding father of the New Canaan Society, James Lane, paid to have intercourse along with her in Chicago across the time he started organizing the group within the mid-1990s.
Ms. Vassell had been the sufferer of intercourse trafficking, she wrote, and Mr. Lane, greater than 20 years older, was the primary man she was dispatched to. Their relationship lasted from 1995 to 1997, she mentioned. Mr. Lane has acknowledged having a relationship with Ms. Vassell previously. By means of his lawyer, he declined to remark for this text.
Within the emails, Ms. Vassell sought acknowledgment from Mr. Lane about his position in what she described as a low level in her life. Ms. Vassell stored sending emails asking that the New Canaan Society take away Mr. Lane from its web site and for the group to disband.
Her reconnection with Mr. Lane got here by likelihood. A pastor had beneficial a biography of German theologian and anti-Nazi dissident
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, she mentioned. The e book had an endorsement from Mr. Lane and talked about his Christian males’s group. It triggered previous recollections and spurred her into motion.
After Ms. Vassell’s emails arrived, Mr. Lane sought assist from Mr. Voge, who was a longtime buddy. The lads had met within the 1990s whereas working in London—Mr. Voge for Latham, and Mr. Lane for
Goldman Sachs.
They attended St. Michael’s Chester Sq. Church, the place Mr. Voge, his spouse and Mr. Lane’s spouse taught Sunday faculty collectively. Mr. Voge later joined the New Canaan Society board.
Mr. Voge in September turned the group’s contact with Ms. Vassell. He inspired Ms. Vassell and Mr. Lane to attend a Christian mediation and reconcile their variations. “A house run is that if the 2 come out smiling and saying they forgive one another,” Mr. Voge mentioned in a current interview.
In his early emails, Mr. Voge expressed sympathy to Ms. Vassell, saying he had labored with organizations that combat intercourse trafficking. “I’m very sorry this occurred to you. I additionally perceive how that damage turned deeper when the injuries had been reopened,” he wrote Sept. 4.
In one other e-mail, he mentioned: “Go forward and trigger irritation to Jim—he wounded you,” however spare Mr. Lane’s household.
Ms. Vassell mentioned she too had a Christian awakening, at age 23. She studied pc science and theology, she mentioned, and married Richard Vassell, an IT skilled, in 1999. They settled in a 3,000-square-foot brick home on a tree-lined cul-de-sac in Naperville, Sick.
The exchanges with Mr. Lane and the New Canaan Society triggered signs of post-traumatic stress dysfunction, Ms. Vassell mentioned, and she or he sought assist from therapists and pastors. She noticed Mr. Voge as one other sympathetic ear.
Mr. Voge lastly persuaded Ms. Vassell and Mr. Lane to comply with mediation.
All through his regulation profession, Mr. Voge relied on his calm underneath strain, for with the ability to put aside feelings as he labored his approach up the ranks.
After high school in rural Iowa, Mr. Voge enlisted within the U.S. Military, studying to intercept Russian communications whereas stationed in Germany. He used the GI Invoice to earn an accounting diploma at California State College, Fresno.
He began regulation faculty on the College of California, Davis, and transferred to UC Berkeley to complete a regulation diploma and earn an M.B.A. His spouse, one time only a Berkeley classmate, helped him rekindle his Christian religion, he mentioned.
In 1983, Mr. Voge started work within the San Diego workplace of Latham & Watkins, on the time a primarily West Coast agency. He mentioned he felt misplaced in these early years in contrast together with his better-credentialed colleagues, however didn’t give up.
Mr. Voge raised his hand to assist and broaden the agency’s places of work in New York and London. He developed a specialty: advising lenders and debtors on worldwide oil-and-gas infrastructure tasks. He crisscrossed the globe for tasks in Pakistan, Russia, Venezuela and Qatar, becoming a member of American Airways’s eight million-mile membership.
In January 2015, Mr. Voge took over as chairman of the two,600-lawyer agency. He adopted Robert Dell,
who by 20 years had expanded Latham from its Los Angeles roots into a worldwide powerhouse.
Throughout his tenure, Mr. Voge mentioned, he pushed for the promotion of minorities and girls.
Unhealthy to worse
In November, Mr. Voge flew to Chicago for agency conferences. On Sunday evening, he mentioned, he started getting ready an annual monetary replace for his 700 companions.
Whereas engaged on the presentation, he and Ms. Vassell swapped emails in regards to the persevering with dispute with Mr. Lane. Then they started texting—he on the Langham lodge, she at a residence 40 miles away.
At first, the messages had been harmless, discussing what he was doing that week in Chicago. The speak turned flirtatious, then sexual.
The steamy back-and-forth went on for greater than an hour. Going to mattress round 11 p.m., Mr. Voge mentioned he recalled considering, “What the heck did I simply do?”
Later within the week, he did it once more by textual content. Additionally they emailed and spoke briefly by telephone. They talked about assembly in particular person however by no means did.
Mr. Voge completed his conferences and boarded a plane to Mexico to satisfy his household for Thanksgiving. His regret started on the first-class flight to the household’s trip residence in Baja California, exterior Cabo Pulmo.
He puzzled how he might clarify his actions to his spouse, a former lawyer who now ran an ice cream store with their daughter.
“I knew it was mistaken,” Mr. Voge mentioned.
The Voges, their 5 grown kids and three spouses had been collectively on Thanksgiving in Mexico. The household roasted a complete pig within the yard.
The subsequent Monday, Ms. Vassell emailed copies of the specific textual content messages with Mr. Voge to Mr. Lane and to the New Canaan Society’s chief govt.
Mr. Voge resigned by e-mail from the Christian group’s board. “I could have brought on us extra grief than I used to be making an attempt to resolve,” he wrote. “It was not my intention to ever make issues worse.”
Then Mr. Voge informed his spouse. He mentioned he had deliberate to inform her earlier than Ms. Vassell despatched the emails. The Voges reduced their quick trip and returned to Solana Seashore.
Mr. Voge in a telephone name with Latham administration provided to resign as chairman. They didn’t settle for.
That week, Mr. Voge spoke with Ms. Vassell by telephone and despatched an apology by text. He mentioned he needed no additional contact. She responded that she would neither settle for his apology nor be silent.
“You might be insane if you happen to assume I’m not coming after you with every part I’ve,” she wrote. “…Males abuse and exploit ladies after which the church that’s dominated by male Elders steps ahead and tells the ladies to forgive. That silly sh— stops with me!”
On Nov. 30, Mr. Voge’s lawyer, Terry Ekl, despatched a letter by messenger to her residence that threatened authorized motion if she didn’t cease contacting Mr. Voge, his regulation agency or anybody affiliated with him. The letter mentioned Mr. Voge would “pursue each felony and civil treatment…together with the reporting of this felony exercise to the regulation enforcement authorities.”
When the letter arrived, Ms. Vassell mentioned, “I simply misplaced it.”
Ms. Vassell emailed a duplicate of the letter to 2 Latham companions and wrote, “I’m very scared.” The subsequent day, she emailed Latham’s common counsel, Everett Johnson: “I needed to be clear that I’m not accusing Voge of any sort of sexual misconduct from my perspective. We had been consenting adults.”
By November, accusations of assault and harassment towards Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein had triggered related experiences towards different males. As extra ladies got here ahead, company America started to take care of allegations of misconduct by males in positions of energy.
Ms. Vassell continued sending emails about Mr. Voge to New Canaan Society members, Latham companions, the top of a competing regulation agency and, later, to a couple media shops. She additionally emailed Jami Voge, Mr. Voge’s spouse.
From December to April, Ms. Vassell despatched greater than 90 emails to Mr. Voge. In some, she mentioned he had executed nothing mistaken and that she was upset she couldn’t be with him. In others, she lashed out at him. Many included sexual fantasies. In a single, she mentioned she had pleaded responsible to harassment in 1998.
“I used to be simply impulsively emailing,” Ms. Vassell mentioned. “I used to be not sleeping. It was a wrestle.”
Final straw
On Jan. 27, Ms. Vassell despatched a prolonged e-mail to greater than 50 New Canaan Society chapter leaders, saying she was “enraged at Voge” and demanding accountability for his actions. Mr. Voge learned about it from a second trip to his residence in Jackson, Wyo., and mentioned it “despatched me over the deep finish.”
The next day Mr. Voge acquired a textual content from Richard Vassell, Ms. Vassell’s husband. They’d communicated cordially earlier that month, however this time Mr. Voge mentioned that Ms. Vassell was committing crimes and would go to jail if she didn’t cease.
“Richard, it’s not threats about jail,” Mr. Voge wrote. “She will probably be in jail!!!”
In one other textual content, Mr. Voge mentioned, “She has dedicated a number of felonies and the proof is overwhelming.”
That very same weekend, Mr. Voge’s lawyer, Mr. Ekl, dispatched an e-mail to Ms. Vassell urging her to cease telling individuals about her interactions with Mr. Voge or danger of authorized motion. Ms. Vassell requested if she might talk about it along with her pastor and therapists. Mr. Ekl mentioned she might so long as she informed him.
The emails from Ms. Vassell slowed. She mentioned she later believed she was coerced into agreeing to Mr. Ekl’s calls for. “I simply felt so micro-controlled,” she mentioned. “It was a lot strain.”
In early March, Mr. Voge and his spouse left for a trip in South America. Whereas in Buenos Aires, a legal professional referred to as Mr. Voge’s lawyer mentioned he represented Ms. Vassell. He mentioned Ms. Vassell and a reporter on the authorized commerce publication Legislation360 had been discussing her communications with Mr. Voge. The lawyer, Michael Cheronis, mentioned Ms. Vassell’s cooperation with the publication would cease for a consideration of “not less than six figures,” in keeping with Mr. Ekl.
Ms. Vassell mentioned she by no means needed cash from anybody concerned and by no means gave the lawyer permission to ask for any. Quickly after hiring Mr. Cheronis, she mentioned, she informed him to cease talking for her. Mr. Cheronis mentioned he couldn’t comment with out Ms. Vassell’s consent.
Mr. Voge mentioned he refused to make any funds. He and his spouse once more returned to their residence early from a trip, skipping a deliberate hike in Patagonia.
The identical day the Voges left for South America, Ms. Vassell emailed copies of the heated textual content exchanges between Mr. Voge and her husband to Latham’s common counsel. When the Voges returned, Latham’s govt committee had learn the texts and had been reconsidering his resignation provide.
In mid-March, the regulation agency’s management gathered in Virginia and referred to as Mr. Voge in California. They mentioned they’d determined to simply accept his resignation and requested him to retire instantly.
The agency issued a press release on March 20, saying Mr. Voge’s “lapses in private judgment made continued service as chair untenable” and that the conduct, whereas unrelated to the agency, was not befitting a Latham chief. Legislation360 reported that day on the texts between Mr. Voge and Ms. Vassell, in addition to these with Ms. Vassell’s husband.
Ten days after dropping his job, Mr. Voge despatched Latham’s partnership an e-mail: “For these of you who had the braveness to inform me of your disappointment, I need you to know that your disappointment in me won’t ever exceed my very own disappointment in myself.”
https://www.law.com/americanlawyer/2018/03/21/fallen-latham-chair-bill-voge-rose-from-iowa-farm-to-big-law-pinnacle/?slreturn=20180615100949
http://www.pressmask.com/the-sexting-scandal-that-toppled-one-of-americas-most-powerful-lawyers/
Bill Voge's life story seemed like the quintessential American dream, as he followed a trajectory from Iowa farm boy to the top of Latham & Watkins before he abruptly resigned amid misconduct allegations.
It had been two days since William Voge was publicly disgraced, and the 61-year-old globe-trotting lawyer couldn’t sleep.
His household, his colleagues and opponents, everybody it appeared, knew in regards to the sexually specific texts he exchanged final yr with a lady he had by no means met in particular person, and nonetheless hasn’t. The fallout scandalized the authorized career and would price Mr. Voge his job at Latham & Watkins LLP, one of many highest grossing regulation companies on the earth, the place he was chairman.
Mr. Voge slipped out of his $5 million home in Solana Seashore, Calif., that evening in March. He went to a close-by bar the place he regarded over a whole bunch of messages on his telephone—some sympathetic, others shaming. His spouse and grown daughter had requested hours earlier when it could all die down.
On a enterprise journey in November, Mr. Voge spent two nights sexting with a married mom of three. After the lady informed others, together with on the regulation agency, Mr. Voge threatened authorized motion, which solely provoked extra hassle.
“I used to be irrational, I used to be silly and I used to be reckless,” Mr. Voge informed The Wall Road Journal.
He sat on the bar that evening ingesting India pale ale, and his ideas grew darker as he went over in his thoughts all that occurred. He might by no means perceive suicide, he mentioned, till he skilled such deep emotions of disgrace firsthand.
Mr. Voge and the Chicago-area girl, Andrea Vassell, by no means had a bodily relationship. The repercussions of their entanglement have however been pricey.
Companions at Latham, which counts such shoppers as Citibank and
American Airways, earn a median of greater than $Three million a yr. Mr. Voge, who grew up on a farm in Iowa, had made twice that earlier than his abrupt departure in March from a regulation agency the place he spent his whole 35-year profession.
Ms. Vassell, 43, is underneath investigation by the police division in Naperville, Sick., the place she lives, for alleged harassment by digital means, a misdemeanor offense.
She denied wrongdoing, and mentioned in an interview that telling others what occurred between her and Mr. Voge wasn’t against the law. She mentioned Mr. Voge tried to bully her into silence, which he denied.
Mr. Voge went to the police, he mentioned, as a result of Ms. Vassell bombarded him and others with harassing emails about their liaison that included untruths.
The lawyer and suburban mother left behind a protracted file of their digital relationship—a monthslong cascade of emails and texts that tracked a roller-coaster path from courtesy to intimacy to anger, in keeping with exchanges considered by the Journal.
Mr. Voge and Ms. Vassell say they really feel betrayed by the opposite. They proceed to obsess over what occurred, dealing with strained marriages and humiliation. They accuse one another of mendacity. Each say they are going to be vindicated when the whole set of textual content exchanges is revealed by police or in courtroom.
Mr. Voge mentioned he has mulled over his therapists’ theories that chemical substances in his “heathen, sex-oriented” mind took over his extra rational aspect whereas he was away from his spouse in Chicago. “I feel that if you happen to commit any sin,” he mentioned, “the worst factor you are able to do is deny your sin.”
For her half, Ms. Vassell mentioned she has an issue with sending impulsive emails. “Don’t you assume we each may very well be at fault?” she mentioned.
Probability encounter
It occurred that Ms. Vassell met Mr. Voge by the New Canaan Society, a nationwide group of Christian businessmen. “The pressures and temptations for males are nice,” the group says on its web site. “NCS provides guys a spot to type deep friendships.”
Ms. Vassell started speaking with the group a few yr in the past. Her emails reached the board, which incorporates company executives, funding managers and evangelical leaders. She wrote that the founding father of the New Canaan Society, James Lane, paid to have intercourse along with her in Chicago across the time he started organizing the group within the mid-1990s.
Ms. Vassell had been the sufferer of intercourse trafficking, she wrote, and Mr. Lane, greater than 20 years older, was the primary man she was dispatched to. Their relationship lasted from 1995 to 1997, she mentioned. Mr. Lane has acknowledged having a relationship with Ms. Vassell previously. By means of his lawyer, he declined to remark for this text.
Within the emails, Ms. Vassell sought acknowledgment from Mr. Lane about his position in what she described as a low level in her life. Ms. Vassell stored sending emails asking that the New Canaan Society take away Mr. Lane from its web site and for the group to disband.
Her reconnection with Mr. Lane got here by likelihood. A pastor had beneficial a biography of German theologian and anti-Nazi dissident
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, she mentioned. The e book had an endorsement from Mr. Lane and talked about his Christian males’s group. It triggered previous recollections and spurred her into motion.
After Ms. Vassell’s emails arrived, Mr. Lane sought assist from Mr. Voge, who was a longtime buddy. The lads had met within the 1990s whereas working in London—Mr. Voge for Latham, and Mr. Lane for
Goldman Sachs.
They attended St. Michael’s Chester Sq. Church, the place Mr. Voge, his spouse and Mr. Lane’s spouse taught Sunday faculty collectively. Mr. Voge later joined the New Canaan Society board.
Mr. Voge in September turned the group’s contact with Ms. Vassell. He inspired Ms. Vassell and Mr. Lane to attend a Christian mediation and reconcile their variations. “A house run is that if the 2 come out smiling and saying they forgive one another,” Mr. Voge mentioned in a current interview.
In his early emails, Mr. Voge expressed sympathy to Ms. Vassell, saying he had labored with organizations that combat intercourse trafficking. “I’m very sorry this occurred to you. I additionally perceive how that damage turned deeper when the injuries had been reopened,” he wrote Sept. 4.
In one other e-mail, he mentioned: “Go forward and trigger irritation to Jim—he wounded you,” however spare Mr. Lane’s household.
Ms. Vassell mentioned she too had a Christian awakening, at age 23. She studied pc science and theology, she mentioned, and married Richard Vassell, an IT skilled, in 1999. They settled in a 3,000-square-foot brick home on a tree-lined cul-de-sac in Naperville, Sick.
The exchanges with Mr. Lane and the New Canaan Society triggered signs of post-traumatic stress dysfunction, Ms. Vassell mentioned, and she or he sought assist from therapists and pastors. She noticed Mr. Voge as one other sympathetic ear.
Mr. Voge lastly persuaded Ms. Vassell and Mr. Lane to comply with mediation.
All through his regulation profession, Mr. Voge relied on his calm underneath strain, for with the ability to put aside feelings as he labored his approach up the ranks.
After high school in rural Iowa, Mr. Voge enlisted within the U.S. Military, studying to intercept Russian communications whereas stationed in Germany. He used the GI Invoice to earn an accounting diploma at California State College, Fresno.
He began regulation faculty on the College of California, Davis, and transferred to UC Berkeley to complete a regulation diploma and earn an M.B.A. His spouse, one time only a Berkeley classmate, helped him rekindle his Christian religion, he mentioned.
In 1983, Mr. Voge started work within the San Diego workplace of Latham & Watkins, on the time a primarily West Coast agency. He mentioned he felt misplaced in these early years in contrast together with his better-credentialed colleagues, however didn’t give up.
Mr. Voge raised his hand to assist and broaden the agency’s places of work in New York and London. He developed a specialty: advising lenders and debtors on worldwide oil-and-gas infrastructure tasks. He crisscrossed the globe for tasks in Pakistan, Russia, Venezuela and Qatar, becoming a member of American Airways’s eight million-mile membership.
In January 2015, Mr. Voge took over as chairman of the two,600-lawyer agency. He adopted Robert Dell,
who by 20 years had expanded Latham from its Los Angeles roots into a worldwide powerhouse.
Throughout his tenure, Mr. Voge mentioned, he pushed for the promotion of minorities and girls.
Unhealthy to worse
In November, Mr. Voge flew to Chicago for agency conferences. On Sunday evening, he mentioned, he started getting ready an annual monetary replace for his 700 companions.
Whereas engaged on the presentation, he and Ms. Vassell swapped emails in regards to the persevering with dispute with Mr. Lane. Then they started texting—he on the Langham lodge, she at a residence 40 miles away.
At first, the messages had been harmless, discussing what he was doing that week in Chicago. The speak turned flirtatious, then sexual.
The steamy back-and-forth went on for greater than an hour. Going to mattress round 11 p.m., Mr. Voge mentioned he recalled considering, “What the heck did I simply do?”
Later within the week, he did it once more by textual content. Additionally they emailed and spoke briefly by telephone. They talked about assembly in particular person however by no means did.
Mr. Voge completed his conferences and boarded a plane to Mexico to satisfy his household for Thanksgiving. His regret started on the first-class flight to the household’s trip residence in Baja California, exterior Cabo Pulmo.
He puzzled how he might clarify his actions to his spouse, a former lawyer who now ran an ice cream store with their daughter.
“I knew it was mistaken,” Mr. Voge mentioned.
The Voges, their 5 grown kids and three spouses had been collectively on Thanksgiving in Mexico. The household roasted a complete pig within the yard.
The subsequent Monday, Ms. Vassell emailed copies of the specific textual content messages with Mr. Voge to Mr. Lane and to the New Canaan Society’s chief govt.
Mr. Voge resigned by e-mail from the Christian group’s board. “I could have brought on us extra grief than I used to be making an attempt to resolve,” he wrote. “It was not my intention to ever make issues worse.”
Then Mr. Voge informed his spouse. He mentioned he had deliberate to inform her earlier than Ms. Vassell despatched the emails. The Voges reduced their quick trip and returned to Solana Seashore.
Mr. Voge in a telephone name with Latham administration provided to resign as chairman. They didn’t settle for.
That week, Mr. Voge spoke with Ms. Vassell by telephone and despatched an apology by text. He mentioned he needed no additional contact. She responded that she would neither settle for his apology nor be silent.
“You might be insane if you happen to assume I’m not coming after you with every part I’ve,” she wrote. “…Males abuse and exploit ladies after which the church that’s dominated by male Elders steps ahead and tells the ladies to forgive. That silly sh— stops with me!”
On Nov. 30, Mr. Voge’s lawyer, Terry Ekl, despatched a letter by messenger to her residence that threatened authorized motion if she didn’t cease contacting Mr. Voge, his regulation agency or anybody affiliated with him. The letter mentioned Mr. Voge would “pursue each felony and civil treatment…together with the reporting of this felony exercise to the regulation enforcement authorities.”
When the letter arrived, Ms. Vassell mentioned, “I simply misplaced it.”
Ms. Vassell emailed a duplicate of the letter to 2 Latham companions and wrote, “I’m very scared.” The subsequent day, she emailed Latham’s common counsel, Everett Johnson: “I needed to be clear that I’m not accusing Voge of any sort of sexual misconduct from my perspective. We had been consenting adults.”
By November, accusations of assault and harassment towards Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein had triggered related experiences towards different males. As extra ladies got here ahead, company America started to take care of allegations of misconduct by males in positions of energy.
Ms. Vassell continued sending emails about Mr. Voge to New Canaan Society members, Latham companions, the top of a competing regulation agency and, later, to a couple media shops. She additionally emailed Jami Voge, Mr. Voge’s spouse.
From December to April, Ms. Vassell despatched greater than 90 emails to Mr. Voge. In some, she mentioned he had executed nothing mistaken and that she was upset she couldn’t be with him. In others, she lashed out at him. Many included sexual fantasies. In a single, she mentioned she had pleaded responsible to harassment in 1998.
“I used to be simply impulsively emailing,” Ms. Vassell mentioned. “I used to be not sleeping. It was a wrestle.”
Final straw
On Jan. 27, Ms. Vassell despatched a prolonged e-mail to greater than 50 New Canaan Society chapter leaders, saying she was “enraged at Voge” and demanding accountability for his actions. Mr. Voge learned about it from a second trip to his residence in Jackson, Wyo., and mentioned it “despatched me over the deep finish.”
The next day Mr. Voge acquired a textual content from Richard Vassell, Ms. Vassell’s husband. They’d communicated cordially earlier that month, however this time Mr. Voge mentioned that Ms. Vassell was committing crimes and would go to jail if she didn’t cease.
“Richard, it’s not threats about jail,” Mr. Voge wrote. “She will probably be in jail!!!”
In one other textual content, Mr. Voge mentioned, “She has dedicated a number of felonies and the proof is overwhelming.”
That very same weekend, Mr. Voge’s lawyer, Mr. Ekl, dispatched an e-mail to Ms. Vassell urging her to cease telling individuals about her interactions with Mr. Voge or danger of authorized motion. Ms. Vassell requested if she might talk about it along with her pastor and therapists. Mr. Ekl mentioned she might so long as she informed him.
The emails from Ms. Vassell slowed. She mentioned she later believed she was coerced into agreeing to Mr. Ekl’s calls for. “I simply felt so micro-controlled,” she mentioned. “It was a lot strain.”
In early March, Mr. Voge and his spouse left for a trip in South America. Whereas in Buenos Aires, a legal professional referred to as Mr. Voge’s lawyer mentioned he represented Ms. Vassell. He mentioned Ms. Vassell and a reporter on the authorized commerce publication Legislation360 had been discussing her communications with Mr. Voge. The lawyer, Michael Cheronis, mentioned Ms. Vassell’s cooperation with the publication would cease for a consideration of “not less than six figures,” in keeping with Mr. Ekl.
Ms. Vassell mentioned she by no means needed cash from anybody concerned and by no means gave the lawyer permission to ask for any. Quickly after hiring Mr. Cheronis, she mentioned, she informed him to cease talking for her. Mr. Cheronis mentioned he couldn’t comment with out Ms. Vassell’s consent.
Mr. Voge mentioned he refused to make any funds. He and his spouse once more returned to their residence early from a trip, skipping a deliberate hike in Patagonia.
The identical day the Voges left for South America, Ms. Vassell emailed copies of the heated textual content exchanges between Mr. Voge and her husband to Latham’s common counsel. When the Voges returned, Latham’s govt committee had learn the texts and had been reconsidering his resignation provide.
In mid-March, the regulation agency’s management gathered in Virginia and referred to as Mr. Voge in California. They mentioned they’d determined to simply accept his resignation and requested him to retire instantly.
The agency issued a press release on March 20, saying Mr. Voge’s “lapses in private judgment made continued service as chair untenable” and that the conduct, whereas unrelated to the agency, was not befitting a Latham chief. Legislation360 reported that day on the texts between Mr. Voge and Ms. Vassell, in addition to these with Ms. Vassell’s husband.
Ten days after dropping his job, Mr. Voge despatched Latham’s partnership an e-mail: “For these of you who had the braveness to inform me of your disappointment, I need you to know that your disappointment in me won’t ever exceed my very own disappointment in myself.”
https://www.law.com/americanlawyer/2018/03/21/fallen-latham-chair-bill-voge-rose-from-iowa-farm-to-big-law-pinnacle/?slreturn=20180615100949
http://www.pressmask.com/the-sexting-scandal-that-toppled-one-of-americas-most-powerful-lawyers/
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