JPMorgan says it investigated and found no wrongdoing — and today we get into how little that sentence is worth once a judge looks at it. This is Banker Sexual Harassment Lawsuit Watch. No new filing today — so, for once, we get to slow down and talk about how the law actually treats an internal probe. And I've been waiting all week for this one. Because “we found nothing” is a press line — whether it survives discovery is a whole different animal. Right. So let's start where we left off on May 29th — what JPMorgan's clean bill of health is actually worth once those files are on the table. The Law360 commentary out of Krevolin Horst frames it nicely — an internal investigation cuts both ways. It can be a shield, or it can hand the other side a target. And here's the procedural hook. Those files are presumptively privileged — attorney-client, work product. They don't just walk into the record. That's the irony Brian's circling — the cleaner you say your investigation was, the more a plaintiff can argue you've put it at issue. And it hits all three of her positions at once — defendant, counterclaimant, state-court plaintiff. Whatever gets produced about how that probe was run doesn't stay in one docket. Which is the bank's nightmare. One discovery order, and the same file bleeds into the harassment case and the defamation case. Good luck containing that. Credit to Law360 for doing the investigative-process legwork here — the wires haven't touched this angle yet. The bank built a paper defense — investigation, referral — then priced out a settlement anyway. The number you offer when you've supposedly found nothing tells you what you think is in those files. We'll leave it there. Morally suggestive, legally undecided — which is exactly where this beat lives. More Monday. When JPMorgan says it looked into these allegations and cleared everyone, does that actually carry legal weight — or is it just good PR? It can cut both ways, and that's what makes it interesting. An internal investigation is a standard defense tool for employers. If it's done right, it helps the company say, look, we took the complaint seriously and acted in good faith. But the Law360 commentary republished by Krevolin Horst flags the flip side: if the investigation looks superficial, one-sided, or outcome-driven, plaintiffs can use it as evidence of pretext, or even retaliation. At that point, the investigation itself becomes part of the fight. There's also a bank-specific wrinkle. Per a Jackson Lewis legal update, financial institutions are advised to bring in outside counsel early and carefully document that the investigation was conducted to get legal advice. That's what helps keep it protected under attorney-client privilege. So if JPMorgan followed that playbook, the full investigation file — the interview notes, the conclusions, the underlying documents — may be protected from discovery. And a recent Sixth Circuit ruling in the FirstEnergy case reaffirmed exactly that: the court vacated an order forcing a company to turn over internal investigation documents, holding that attorney-client privilege and work-product protections still applied even when the company later made business use of the findings. So can the plaintiff just never see those files, or is there a way to crack that privilege shield open? There’s one big vulnerability: waiver. Per a Lexology analysis of a recent California ruling, if JPMorgan invokes the adequacy of its own investigation as a defense — basically telling the court, “we investigated and found nothing” — that can waive privilege over the same files it’s been trying to protect. A New Jersey case covered by HC Magazine shows how this works in practice: once an employer leans on its investigation to defend itself, the other side gets to scrutinize the full record. So watch whether JPMorgan’s legal strategy explicitly relies on the investigation’s findings, because that choice could open the door to discovery. If this show scratches your court-watch itch, try Arcadia Mayor Spy Watch: daily coverage of the federal foreign-agent prosecution of former Arcadia mayor Eileen Wang and the resolved Yaoning “Mike” Sun case. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
If you want to go deeper on anything we covered, the links to every story are in the show notes. Take a minute there for the pieces you want to read in full.
That’s Banker Sexual Harassment Lawsuit Watch for this Friday, June 5th. This is a Lantern Podcast.