Home store tycoon John Menard hired six outside law firms to crush his company’s former chief counsel. She beat him anyway – handily.
Dawn Sands, 43, was vice president and executive general counsel for the Eau Claire-based chain, handling the company’s messy legal matters, including numerous environmental violations. But in March 2006, the state’s richest man sent Sands packing. According to her later testimony, he gave Sands five minutes to “get her ass out of here,” then had her office door chained and padlocked.
Sands’ crime? Three months after defending Menards in a possible class action suit charging that the company discriminated against women and minorities, she asked for a pay raise herself.
At the time, legal records show, Sands earned less than half of what her male predecessor earned seven years earlier. While her male peers – the company’s chief financial officer and chief information officer – took home salaries and bonuses worth $350,000 to $400,000, her annual compensation was $64,313.
For years, Sands trusted John Menard’s repeated promises of higher pay, she testified. After all, John and her sister Debbie were engaged for nine years.
But after the dispute with Menard, he threatened to “run up legal bills so astronomical” he’d ruin Dawn, and told Debbie he’d hate to see her name in the obits, the sisters testified (and Menard denied).
Like all Menards employees, Dawn signed an agreement requiring her to settle any dispute with the company before a private arbitration panel. And she did that. In October 2007, a three-judge panel ruled unanimously that Menards had violated the Equal Pay Act and then illegally retaliated against Sands by firing her.
The panel ordered Menards to pay Sands $1.6 million and reinstate her as chief counsel. When he refused, the case moved to Eau Claire Circuit Court, where he was charged with contempt.
Spokesman Jeff Abbott says Menards respects the arbitration ruling, but should get to choose who represents it in “sensitive legal matters.”
With Menard, 69, still refusing to rehire Sands, her attorney will attempt to calculate what she would be owed if she worked for Menards through retirement. Sands will also ask the court to void all Menards employee arbitration agreements. The court reconvenes in May.
For more on John Menard, see Big Money and Legal Hell.
