A law firm already accused of using survivors of the Pulse nightclub massacre to lure Las Vegas mass shooting victims as clients is being sued for sending its Orlando clients on an ambulance-chasing road trip with a sex-hungry employee.
The Conrad Benedetto law firm was retained by Javier Nava and Brian Nunez shortly after the mass shooting in Orlando that killed 49 people. But rather than represent the men in a legal case, the law firm sent them on an “exploitative” road trip to recruit victims of the 2017 shooting in Las Vegas, according to their New Jersey state lawsuit.
What’s more, the men were accompanied on the trip by the firm’s sex-hungry office manager, John Groff, who has been accused of trading sex for legal services before, the lawsuit says.
Nava and Nunez initially thought the road trip would be “therapeutic.” Instead, they were sexually harassed and treated like employees, with Groff demanding they “do [their] job and get other people to sign up,” according to the suit.
When they rejected Groff’s sexual advances, he threatened to stop paying for the food and lodging for the trip, the suit said.
In screenshots of text messages attached to the lawsuit, Groff repeatedly asks Nava for oral sex, saying he is “hungry as s–t,” “And I want to eat YOU!”
“Thanks for the effort but nop. I’m not food,” Nava responds.
Groff also sent Nava pornographic images of men performing oral sex, including “a picture of a man apparently performing oral sex on Defendant Groff,” the lawsuit said.
When Nava rejects Groff, saying he wants to remain “friends” and that he doesn’t want to “talk about it in person,” the office manager lashes out, according to the lawsuit.
“Oh wow you can’t even talk F–k I’m good done since you can’t even give me a f–king conversation.”
Lawyers Matthew Luber of McOmber & McOmber and Brian Claypool of the Claypool Law Firm say the Benedetto law firm should have known that Groff was a problem because it had been slapped with a lawsuit in 2016 accusing the office manager of trading sex for legal services.
“Benedetto was placed on notice in 2016 of Groff’s alleged predatory behavior and instead of terminating Groff, Benedetto rebranded Groff as a ‘marketing manager,’ and allowed him to continue his abusive and reprehensible behavior,” the lawyers said in a statement.
Neither Groff nor Benedetto returned a request for comment.
It’s unclear if Groff still works for the Benedetto law firm but his name remains active in the firm’s telephone directory.