Just last week, we reported on a lawsuit filed March 20 in U.S. District Court in Manhattan by a legal tech executive, Silvia Diaz-Roa. She alleges that her former company, Hermes Law and its spin-off, ClaimDeck, owe her over $1 million in stock options, and she further claims that her former boss sexually harassed her. Unbeknownst to us at the time, however, her former employers had launched a lawsuit against her just a week prior in a Texas federal court.
In the Texas suit, Hermes Law and ClaimDeck assert that they rightfully terminated Diaz-Roa for cause, and consequently, her stock options were also justifiably terminated. We discovered this counter lawsuit when we received an email response from the defendants’ representative, Stefanie Shah, an Austin lawyer with the firm Vela Wood, in response to Diaz-Roa’s allegations. Shah’s clients deny the allegations, and contend that Diaz-Roa’s New York lawsuit was actually in reaction to the declaratory judgment action they had initiated a week prior in the Northern District of Texas.
The Texas lawsuit does not deny that Hermes and ClaimDeck issued a stock option to Diaz-Roa in 2020, but it stipulates that the option terms specify forfeiture in the event of a termination for cause—which they claim is the case here. For those interested, the full text of the Texas complaint is available.
The disputes do not end at stock options and job termination. The Texas suit further states that Diaz-Roa violated the companies’ remote work policy by refusing to return to the Dallas office post-graduation, choosing instead to move to New York. They categorize this move as one of several justifiable causes for termination, concluding that the associated stock options were therefore also forfeited.
Finally, as part of the Texas lawsuit, the co-defendants Hermes and ClaimDeck are seeking declaratory judgments confirming their termination of Diaz-Roa for cause, the termination of her stock options, and her lack of equity in the tech legal company. According to Stefanie Shah, “We expect that the New York and Texas courts will rule in favor of our clients.”