Top Plaintiffs' Verdict by Impact: Williams v. Wyndham Vacation Ownership

Whistleblower Trish Williams is a former Wyndham timeshare sales representative who alleged she was wrongfully terminated after raising concerns about company policy she said was aimed at defrauding elderly customers. The company fired her in 2010 after she reported a system in which customers had credit cards opened and maxed out in their names, often without their knowledge.

"There were straight-up fraudulent promises of full price buybacks," Christopher B. Dolan of the Dolan Law Firm said. He and Anne C. Costin of Costin Law Inc. presented evidence to jurors of a sales practice known as TAFT days. The acronym stood for "Tell Them Any Fucking Thing" and was designed to encourage salespeople to say whatever was necessary to get buyers to further invest in their timeshares.

Dolan and Costin quoted another former sales agent as saying, "I sold my soul to the devil. I can say whatever I want so long as I don't put it in writing. That's why Wyndham has good lawyers."

Costin said opposing counsel tried to bury her in paper. "This was an epic battle against a well-funded army of lawyers that took us across the United States to obtain evidence and testimony demonstrating the fraud," she said. "They sent tens of thousands of documents out of order. I sat on my office floor for three weeks putting them together. Much was redacted. They tried to conceal everything."

"It was death by a thousand million paper cuts," Dolan said. "We would show up in court every morning and there would be another motion on our table. Our client was called a troublemaker, called a cancer. It was extremely challenging. She turned down even an abnormally large settlement offer. She was eating ramen noodles, but she wanted a recorded verdict against the world's largest timeshare company. Getting the verdict was what mattered to her."

Costin and Dolan have separate San Francisco offices now, but they began as a team when Costin started as Dolan's law clerk before opening her own firm four years ago. "As a colleague and a mentor, it was an honor to work with her on this case," Dolan said. "We have a legal Vulcan mind meld. When I am about to ask her for a document, she hands it to me before I can speak."

Added Costin, "He trained me how to be a lawyer." The pair said they are about to begin the post-trial motion process. "The saga continues," Dolan said.

— John Roemer