Litigator loses case, writes musical comedy about it

Shangri-La-La poster at Arlington Drafthouse

When a lawyer loses a case, the lawyer moves on. The experience might be quickly forgotten as run of the mill, or memorably instructive. Either way, it's in the past.

Mike Meier lost a case and did something entirely different. He left practice and wrote a musical comedy about it.

Virginia attorney Meier represented the plaintiffs in Preiss v. Horn (9th Cir. 2013), filed in Nevada. Preiss, who served as physical therapist to Roy Horn, of the famous performing duo Siegfried & Roy, alleged that his services were terminated when he rebuffed Horn's sexual advances. He sued under civil rights law. Preiss's wife was a co-plaintiff, alleging infliction of emotional distress "after watching a videotape of events involving her husband after those events occurred."

The litigation failed. Preiss's claim got hung up on the question of whether he was actually employed by Horn, in the legal sense. The relationship was unclear and proved insufficient to support a civil rights claim.

Preiss's wife complained of negligent infliction of emotional distress (NIED). NIED usually is not actionable in American jurisdictions, as I've explained before at The Savory Tort. Insofar as there are exceptions, the plaintiff watching a video well after the fact did not evidence the contemporaneous observation required by exceptions for liability to bystanders.

The outcome is not surprising, and one need not think it dispositive of what happened between Preiss and Horn. Tort cases without physical injury—such as civil rights claims, defamation and privacy, and infliction of emotional distress—always are a heavy lift for plaintiffs, because they bear the burden of mustering evidence usually in the possession of the defense. Failure to prove does not establish the truth or falsity of the allegations.

Against the odds, Meier fought hard for his clients, and maybe too hard. According to a disciplinary disposition in New York (Sup. Ct. App. Div. 2018), the federal trial judge in Nevada found plaintiffs' claims in opposition to dismissal "not simply without merit but blatantly and undeniably so," insistence on the NIED claim "'absurd' and 'frivolous,'" and prosecution of Preiss's claim "needlessly, unreasonably, and vexatiously multipl[ying] the proceedings in bad faith."

The federal court ordered Meier to pay a sanction entered against the plaintiffs. His home bar of Virginia suspended him from practice for 30 days, and the New York court entered a censure.

The whole affair might have been a welcome excuse for Meier to pursue his passions quite outside the courtroom, in writing, stage, and music. His website Mike Meier Writes now boasts eight screenplays and three books, besides the present project. 

The description of the screenplay Where the Aliens Are exemplifies the sort of quirky narrative Meier favors: "In this science fiction comedy, an elderly professor, along with his neighbors, a lesbian couple and their son, set out to save the world from an impending alien invasion."

Arlington Drafthouse
marquee, July 2025
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

In July at the Arlington Drafthouse in northern Virginia, I was treated to one in just a three-performance run of Meier's comedy musical, Shangri-La-La, a.k.a. All That Glitters (trailer at YouTube). The show is a thinly disguised retelling of the facts alleged in Preiss v. Horn. Meier's website summarizes:

It is a comedy about Las Vegas show business and human nature, with a sprinkling of drama and #Metoo. Joshua from Germany fulfills his lifelong dream of moving to Las Vegas. He is thrilled to get a job as the assistant to the retired Siegfried & Roy, only to find out the hard way that not all that glitters is gold. Joshua’s quest for justice culminates in a court case. But Joshua does not know about the Las Vegas tradition of "Hometown Justice." After all, that Las Vegas tradition began with Bugsy Siegel, the New York criminal who built the first casino on the Las Vegas strip, The Flamingo.

Aptly, Meier himself played Joshua's lawyer. The show pulls no punches in telling Meier's side of the story, both as to the plaintiffs' facts and his own plight as their counselor. In Meier's telling of it, he was victimized by Las Vegas insiders, a legal system under Horn's influence, and punished for daring to challenge a monied icon and power player. 

Who knows. Vegas is no stranger to corrupt influences, and stranger things have happened there.

Of course, owing to Meier's penchant for the absurd and the fictionalization of the case, the stage telling is over the top and does not purport to be factual, wink-wink. It's an amusing romp at the expense of Siegfried and Roy, who are played as buffoons, if dangerous ones. Their comical, Hans-and-Franz-reminiscent accents put on plenty of comedy mileage. Meier himself grew up in Germany, and his speech bears just a trace of authentic accent, in contrast.

Siegfried and Roy are both dead now, since 2021. Even insofar as their estates have lingering legal interests in trademark or right of publicity, All That Glitters is plainly a parody from an outsider's perspective.

The play has a dense script and an original score. Both vacillate between clever and banal. Some droll dialog earns laughs, to be sure. There is also ample jejune chatter that sorely needs rewrite by an experienced comedic editor. The songs are catchy in places, and elsewhere blister with lackluster lyrics. The cast did a superb job with what they had to work with.

To be fair, such a mixed record is to be expected in a straight-to-stage vanity project. Meier deserves credit for his determination. Polished stagecraft is not really the point. 

Meier manages to put his creative stamp on a compelling story and somehow turns sexual harassment into legit comedy. At the same time, with Siegfried and Roy gone, Meier gets the last word in his case. And he clearly has a wicked good time doing it.

You can listen to five tunes from Shangri-La-La at Mike Meier Writes. I'm weirdly looking forward to Meier's forthcoming mockumentary, "So You Think You Can Trust the Media?"

It happens, incidentally, that a couple of weeks after I saw Shangri-La-La in Arlington, I visited the Flamingo in Las Vegas. I had a fabulous time at the Flamingo-resident show Piff the Magic Dragon, starring Piff, the lovely Jade Simone, and the world's only magic-performing chihuahua, Mr. Piffles, an act of America's Got Talent and Queer Eye fame. I got to scratch Mr. Piffles under the muzzle after the show. The trio is on tour now with All-Star Vegas, appearing in Cranston, Rhode Island, tomorrow, September 18.

Plaintiff verdict upheld for IIED, hostile environment upon shocking attorney maltreatment of employee

The Massachusetts Appeals Court today upheld a verdict against a lawyer for shocking maltreatment of an employee.

mohamed_hassan (pixabay.com)

The employee, a Hispanic woman, was a clerical worker with responsibilities well into the paralegal vein.  She had worked in the attorney's office for about three years when she quit and sued for intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED), hostile-work-environment sexual harassment, and constructive discharge.  Finding the defendant attorney liable, the jury awarded $20,000 on the IIED claim, $20,000 on the sexual harassment claim, and $150,000 in punitive damages.

Collaterally, plaintiff's husband was found liable in assault, for which defendant was awarded $1,000, and was held responsible for illegal wiretapping.

The Appeals Court affirmed plaintiff's verdict.  Application of law in the case was routine.  The court upheld the verdict as against defendant's erroneous assertions (1) that worker's compensation superseded IIED; (2) that the jury had doubled up on its calculation of damages; (3) that the jury was misinstructed on punitive damages; (4) that evidence of defendant's losses was improperly excluded; (5) that the evidence failed to support the jury's findings of causation and damages; and (6) that plaintiff evidence not produced in discovery was admitted at trial without sufficient remediation.

None of that is why I comment on the case here.  Rather, I want to republish the court's recitation of the facts, because they constitute a shocking portrait of a workplace that no person should have to endure for one day, much less three years.  Please keep in mind that the defendant here is a member of the bar.  And be warned that this text is not suitable for kids. 

Viewing the evidence with respect to the counts of the plaintiff's complaint for which the defendant was found liable, in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, the jury could have found as follows. The plaintiff was employed as a legal assistant at the law office of defendant, an attorney with a solo practice in Essex County. When she began working there in 2012, the plaintiff was the defendant's sole employee, but the defendant expanded his staff after hiring her.

The plaintiff's duties evolved over her years of working in the office, from answering the office telephones, handling the mail, and scheduling meetings, to working on interrogatories, doing legal research, and discussing client settlements. The plaintiff's desk was in the reception area of the office, across from the defendant's office. When the defendant was in the office, he worked directly with the plaintiff as her direct supervisor.

The plaintiff's complaint alleged, and the jury could have found, that over the course of several years the defendant made numerous comments and engaged in repeated behaviors that constituted tortious misconduct. This conduct occurred at the defendant's office, in the course of the plaintiff's employment. The defendant verbally attacked the plaintiff, calling her stupid and a moron. The plaintiff's coworkers testified that the defendant often belittled the plaintiff in the office, shouting uncontrollably at her and screaming in her face. When she tried to defend herself, he would yell at her to shut up and continue to scream at her. The defendant's screams could be heard even in offices on the floor above the defendant's office. When she was not present, and the defendant was angry with her, he would describe the plaintiff as a bitch, a slut, or a whore. He would also say she was crazy. There was a jar kept in the office into which the defendant would place money each time he called the plaintiff stupid.

Much of this misconduct related to the plaintiff's gender and race. The defendant told the plaintiff that men were intelligent while women were stupid; men were "superior" to women. He instructed the plaintiff to clean up after him in the office, including the mess left behind after his meals, because "that was women's work." The defendant also made comments about the plaintiff's and other female employees' appearances at work. He referred to one female employee as "Miss Dominican Republic." The defendant, at times without prior permission, photographed the plaintiff and her female coworker for the purpose of showing his friends "that I have nice girls here at the office." The plaintiff and another employee testified that the defendant would stand close behind the plaintiff while she was at her desk and look at her cleavage.  When she asked him to stop staring at her breasts, he responded that he could not help it and that she should wear other clothes to work. The plaintiff was also instructed to pick up condoms and lubricant for the defendant when she ran errands for him. The defendant would have the plaintiff go through his e-mails in the office, including pornographic advertisements; he once sent a pornographic e-mail to the plaintiff's daughter.

In explicit detail, the defendant would describe his sexual encounters to the plaintiff at the office.  The defendant described himself to the plaintiff as "always horny," asked her to comment on his girlfriend's breasts, and repeatedly described sex with his girlfriend to the plaintiff. He recounted a trip to the Dominican Republic in which he said his hotel room "came with [a] girl" and that "for $20 he got full service. Blow job and everything."  He described women in the Dominican Republic as "a bargain." He frequently bragged to the plaintiff of a trip to the Philippines in which he claimed he had sex with "cheap" young girls. When she asked him to stop, he ignored her or told her that she had to listen to this commentary because he paid her.

In speaking to the plaintiff, a Hispanic woman, the defendant made numerous racist remarks to her about African-American and Hispanic people. He would refer to his Hispanic clients as "drug dealers" and say that African-Americans were "stupid" and white people were superior. She testified that he used a number of racial slurs, referring to his Hispanic clients as "F-ing Spic[s]" and "calling [black] people n[word*]." When she asked him to stop making such comments, he disregarded her or told her to shut up and listen to him because he was her boss. The plaintiff testified that the defendant also made her sit with him and read his e-mails consisting of racist comments and "jokes" about black and Hispanic people. He often made fun of her accent and told her that her brown eyes were "dirty" compared to his "superior" blue eyes, which were "beautiful."

The plaintiff ultimately left the defendant's employ on October 22, 2015, after an incident with the defendant in the office. The defendant had been yelling at the plaintiff for failing to follow his instructions, and when she tried to explain what she had done, he repeatedly screamed at her to shut up. She informed the defendant that she was not feeling well and needed to go home, and the defendant told her, "Get the hell out of my office. Don't ever come back if you don't say sorry to me." The plaintiff left without the intention of returning, and her employment with the defendant ended.

....

After the plaintiff left the defendant's office, her husband went to the office himself to confront the defendant about his treatment of the plaintiff. After turning on his cell phone camera to record this encounter and placing the cell phone in his shirt pocket, the husband entered the office and moved toward the defendant, who was sitting at the front conference table talking on his cell phone. The husband sat down at the conference table near the defendant and told the defendant repeatedly to put his cell phone away.  The defendant and the plaintiff's husband began to argue at increasing volume about whether the defendant would put the cell phone away, and the husband told the defendant to listen to him. The defendant, feeling threatened, retreated to his office and closed the door, repeatedly telling the husband to leave. The husband opened the defendant's office door, and the defendant slammed it shut and called the police.

*All redactions in court opinion, except this one, which is mine.

These frightening facts embody the IIED rule of "utterly intolerable in a civilized society."  In our cancel culture, so replete with persons eager to be offended and to castigate their offenders with the force of law, we would be well advised to remember people who are truly and terribly victimized.  Watering down our civil rights law by giving eggshell plaintiffs ready access to administrative remedies, in disregard of the rights of respondents, is likely to result in over-corrective reforms that allow perpetrators of this despicable magnitude to escape accountability.

The case is Spagnuolo v. Holzberg, No. 19-P-778 (Mass. App. Ct. Oct. 21, 2020).  The opinion was authored by Justice Peter J. Rubin for a panel also comprising Justices Milkey and Massing.