Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld has won an appeal in a dispute with a recruiter that claimed it was owed a placement fee for a lawyer the firm hired in 2006. In an unsigned decision, the Appellate Division, 1st Department, upheld a lower court’s dismissal last year of the suit brought by recruiter Sivin-Tobin Associates.
Sivin-Tobin sued Akin Gump in 2006 for breach of contract and unjust enrichment after a different recruiter received a $227,500 fee for placing Chang-Joo Kim, a Korea specialist then at Dorsey & Whitney. The recruiter claimed it had an implied contract with the law firm when it sent a partner in Akin Gump’s New York office a term sheet and package about Kim. Meanwhile, an Akin Gump partner in Washington, unbeknownst to the partner in New York, received Kim’s resume from a Boston recruiting firm nine days later. The firm said it decided to hire him based on that referral.
