Last month, Chelsea Davis filed a lawsuit, which in and of itself is pretty unremarkable given that she's a lawyer.. Davis, though, is a patent attorney, and this particular suit has nothing to do with the nuances of intellectual property law, a fact she alluded to in a handful of Facebook posts on the topic.
"The press in Dallas," she writes in one, "may be too scared to report it."
"Scared" probably isn't the right description of the media's response to her filing. "Skeptical" is probably a fairer term. "Scrupulous" works too. Because the lawsuit is a wild one.
Davis focuses her accusations on her boss, Sam Baxter, a lawyer at the respected law firm McKool Smith who interviewed the self-described "overachiever" for a job in 2010.
Here, according to court filings, is what happened over the next 10 months:
Chelsea Davis accepted Mr. Baxter's offer of employment at McKool Smith wholly unaware of Samuel Baxter's reputation for making inappropriate advances on female employees. Throughout her tenure at McKool Smith, Ms. Davis would learn that Samuel Baxter preys upon young, unsuspecting females and uses his money, power and influence to snare his victims. Chelsea Davis entered into employment at McKool Smith as a young, beautiful, naive, ambitious, and recently divorced woman, thus rendering her a delicious target. Rather than using his power, money and influence to improve the patent litigation profession, as all respectable lawyers should, Samuel Baxter has repeatedly chosen to use his stature as a tool to carry out his perversions and abuse. Hiding behind the prestige of his position as shareholder at McKool Smith and Chelsea Davis's mento, Chelsea Davis, like many of Mr. Baxter's victims, never foresaw the tremendous abuse Mr. Baxter would repeatedly inflict on her.
This alleged abuse Davis suffered included:
- Forced sex slavery to one of the firm's major financial backers;
- Threats "to have her raped by a judge who was HIV positive if she did not do as she was told";
- Choking and strangulation.
- Intentional infection with HPV
- Refusal to let her sue a man who had intentionally infected her with herpes.
Davis provides no evidence for these claims, and there's no reason to take them seriously. On the contrary, in a filing categorically denying the allegations in the suit, Baxter provides ample reason not to.
McKool Smith fired Davis in January 2011, for cause. Two years later, Baxter's attorney writes, she began harassing him and making death threats against him and his family. The demands that come with these threats vary widely and "range from demanding Dallas Cowboys tickets to being paid tens of millions of dollars."
Nor is Baxter the only person Davis has harassed. In 2011, she was sued by her own father, accusing her of making death threats and stalking him at his home and business.
Baxter's filing also points the court to reports Davis has filed with the Dallas Police Department. In one filed February 5, she claimed that "she was being watched by Navy SEALs and her phone and computer had been tapped. She told the police that she was involved in a sex ring with approximately 20 males and females giving HIV to the individuals with whom they have sex. She told the police she feels unsafe and afraid that the snipers are going to kill her. The police also reported that she made multiple calls to 911 on that date and had 'multiple episodes in previous days.'"
In conclusion, her claims should be viewed by the court "with extreme skepticism," Baxter's filing says, and is asking a judge to dismiss the suit.
