Genie E. Harrison

Harrison went to law school hoping to prosecute war criminals. Instead she found her calling in an employment law class.

“I really didn’t know about sexual harassment and the laws against it when I went to law school,” said the owner of the Genie Harrison Law Firm in Los Angeles. “All that stuff I had been subjected to. I thought, ‘I can try to vindicate victims of this kind of behavior? That sounds awesome.’”

In recent months, Harrison has set her sights on disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein. Working with an attorney in New York, she filed a complaint there on behalf of Weinstein’s former assistant, Sandeep Rehal.

The case also illustrates some of the difficulties in bringing harassment claims. An initial attempt to pursue Weinstein in New York was derailed by jurisdictional issues. He and other entertainment industry figures have also sought to hide behind a confusing array of LLCs and LLPs that can make it difficult to show liability, she added.

The wider society is now having a version of the awakening Harrison had in law school almost 30 years ago, she said. This has caused many people to come forward, but some no longer have any legal recourse.

“I’m dealing with so many telephone calls from women who were victimized outside of the statute of limitations,” she said.

Harrison described her small firm’s approach as “low-volume, high-quality.” She only takes a few cases a year, typically ones where she feels can be a “clear story” that will place a judge or a jury in the shoes of the victim.

Such stories always have one element in common: power disparities. She joked that no sexual harassment lawsuit has ever started with the junior clerk telling a famous actress “Come meet me in the mail room, I’m going to have my bathrobe on.”

Harrison recently testified at a hearing in Sacramento, telling the California Legislature about the steps it should take to address its own #MeToo moment. While the Legislature has been making rules for everybody else, she said, it has largely exempted itself from scrutiny.

“There are many lawyers who say no to public entity cases because they’re so complex,” Harrison said. “Public entities have various governmental immunities.”

— Malcolm Maclachlan