The Gift That---Unfortunately---Keeps On Giving

"A Manhattan lawyer is suing his wife, her lover, and her father, claiming she gave him a venereal disease she contracted while having an affair".
(From a New York Post article, September 21, 2008)



Of all the repercussions that can result from extramarital sex, contracting a sexually transmitted disease, and then passing it on to your spouse, ranks right up there with getting your lover pregnant (or getting pregnant by your lover). But that's what happened to Amy Tanne and her husband, Frederick Tanne.

While looking through his medicine cabinet one day, Mr. Tanne found a herpes-treatment drug that his father-in-law (a physician) had prescribed for Amy. Mr. Tanne demanded to know how Amy could possibly have contracted herpes, since neither one had ever had a sexually transmitted disease previously. She eventually admitted that she had been having an affair with a prominent Westchester County accountant named Robert Stockel, who had presumably given her the disease. Mr. Tanne then had himself tested for herpes and, sure enough, he has it.

At that point, Mr. Tanne, a senior litigation partner at Kirkland & Ellis, a huge (1,400 lawyer) national law firm, decided to sue everyone involved on one legal theory or another. He filed a divorce action against his wife on the grounds of adultery, a separate tort action against Stockel for "knowingly transferring the virus", and another tort claim against his father-in-law and Amy for "conspiring to hide the infidelity and the subsequent infection". In addition to a divorce from Amy, Mr. Tanne is seeking monetary compensation from all three of the defendants for medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering.

Let me point out here that some of Mr. Tanne's allegations have been denied by the defendants, and it may be many months before the whole story emerges. But the damage has already been done, a lot of it self-inflicted by Mr. Tanne, who apparently has allowed his anger (which is justified, if the allegations are true) to cloud his judgment.

As an experienced litigation lawyer, Mr. Tanne knows that court filings are generally considered public records, unless they are specifically "sealed" by the judge assigned to the case. Given the juicy nature of the case, and the fact that the parties are all high-income, high-profile professionals, it was eminently foreseeable that a tabloid like the Post would ferret out the story and have a field day with it (the headline was "Cuckold 'Sore' at His Wife").

My guess is that Mr. Tanne is less interested in getting a monetary judgment against the defendants---he probably makes well over a million dollars a year at his firm---as he is in punishing them and making life difficult for them. As I said, he has a right to be angry. In fact, he has a right to be very angry; people have gotten killed for less. But just as Mr. Tanne's lawyerly restraint kept him from showing up at Stockel's office with a loaded gun, that same restraint should have kept him from filing legal actions that will wind up humiliating himself more than they humiliate the defendants.

Sadly, clouded judgments and rash actions are all-too-common in divorce cases. It doesn't matter if the person is a lawyer, a doctor, or a Fortune 500 CEO; anger and the lust for revenge will undo decades of professional training. It happened a while back in the Jack Welch divorce case. Welch, one of the most famous corporate executives of our time, had an affair, filed for divorce, but then became an absolute madman when it came to opposing his wife's financial demands. He wound up paying her anyway, but he lost not only a lot of money but a lot of respect among his peers that had taken decades to build up.

The Post article implied that another attorney was representing Mr. Tanne. That's certainly a good thing---we all know the adage about lawyers representing themselves---but I have to wonder whether that lawyer really thought it was a good idea to file the various lawsuits or whether he just gave Mr. Tanne what he wanted. A good divorce lawyer always needs to consider his client's long-term interests. That may mean telling the client (in a diplomatic way, if possible) what he doesn't want to hear. It may also mean talking the client out of revenge-based attacks. This isn't easy to do, especially when the client is a lawyer himself, but it's necessary if the lawyer wants to keep the client from being called a "cuckold" in the newspaper.

The other obvious lesson from this unhappy story is that, in this day and age, if you're going to risk your marriage and your future by having an affair, you shouldn't compound the risk by having unprotected sex. Amy Tanne probably thought that with an educated, high-income professional like Robert Stockel she had nothing to worry about. She was wrong. And now her lapse of judgment, coupled with a very different lapse of judgment on her husband's part, has turned a private affair into a very public spectacle.