© 2018 The Texas Lawbook.
Finalist: Non-GC of the Year for a Mid-sized Legal Department
By Mark Curriden
(Jan. 16) – Zale Corporation executives were interviewing candidates in 2000 for a senior in-house legal position when Janie Perelman’s name surfaced.
Perelman, who was then an associate general counsel at airfreight company Kitty Hawk, had met Zale’s lawyers before in her previous job.
“What’s interesting is that I had sued Zale years earlier in an employment case,” she says. “Zale’s outside lawyers reported to the general counsel at Zale that I had been fair as opposing counsel.”
Eighteen years later, Perelman is vice president and assistant general counsel at Michaels Stores, where she leads labor and employment law, general liability and litigation matters for the Irving-based arts and crafts operation. She has scored numerous major legal successes during the past two years, including a decisive victory when a federal appeals court affirmed a dismissal of the class action litigation involving the company’s 2014 data breach.
Perelman is also very active in the community. She’s a huge supporter of pro bono efforts and animal rescue.
“Lawyers should use their legal knowledge and skills for the good of people and others, like animals, who need help,” she says. “If there’s a stray on the side of the street, I will stop and pick them up and find a friend for adoption.”
Perelman’s successes are being recognized by the Dallas-Fort Worth Chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel and The Texas Lawbook, which have named her as a finalist for the 2017 Outstanding Corporate Counsel Non-GC of the Year Award.
The Outstanding Corporate Counsel finalists and winners will be honored on Thursday, Jan. 25, at the Bush Institute.
“Throughout her career, Janie has used creative thinking to improve the process and make her team more efficient,” Dallas lawyers Michelle Hartmann of Baker McKenzie and Ben Stewart of Bailey Brauer said in nominating Perelman for the award.
“By being aggressive about preventative measures, the litigation team has resolved countless matters and saved the company significant sums under Janie’s direction,” Hartmann and Stewart said. “This is evident in her spearheading a new general liability reporting method that will cut significant time on stores reporting customer claims.”
Perelman was born and raised in Brownsville. Her parents – both Mexico-born – spoke Spanish at home. Her father was an architect, real estate developer and engineer. Her mother was a real estate agent who was active in politics, including serving on the Texas Democratic State Committee.
“I started thinking about being a lawyer when I was five,” she says.
After getting a bachelor’s degree of journalism from the University of Texas, Perelman stayed in Austin and worked on political campaigns and in the legislature. Two years later, she went to the University of Houston Law Center.
Perelman joined a small plaintiff’s law firm in 1992 and spent seven years practicing trial law.
Kitty Hawk hired Perelman in 1999, and she has been an in-house lawyer ever since. After seven years at Zale, she spent two years at Guarantee Bank and almost one year at CEC Entertainment.
In July 2010, Michaels Stores hired Perelman to be its director over litigation and labor and employment. She has since been promoted to vice president and assistant general counsel.
“I had an opportunity to become a general counsel elsewhere, but I took this job because I loved the work environment and culture here,” she says. “Virtually everything in litigation involving general liability or anything that touches our employees is my area. We are a very hands-on group. We review just about every pleading and strategize on all matters.
“I have to be a really well-rounded lawyer to do this job,” she says.
During the past couple of years, Perelman has gotten a major pricing case and a large wage-and-hour class action lawsuit dismissed without class settlements. She credits her success to her boss, Michael Veitenheimer, and a strong support team around her of in-house and outside counsel.
“Last year, Janie reduced litigation costs and worked vigorously to dismiss matters, to explore early resolution when warranted, trained the legal team on legal issues and risk avoidance, coordinated with outside counsel and firms and educated the HR and claims adjustment teams on legal issues related to their fields,” Stewart and Hartmann said in the nomination.
“That said, Janie is willing to fight when the reputation of Michaels is on the line or the case requires litigating aggressively on principle,” they stated.
Perelman says she takes a simple approach.
“People – be they customers or employees – want to be treated fairly and with respect,” Perelman says. “We have the ability to stop things or fix things before they become a problem or issue. Michaels is all about prevention, including the prevention of damage and harm to our customers.
“The key is to be strategic and creative in solving problems,” she says.
In early 2014, Perelman confronted one of the biggest challenges of her legal career.
Michaels Stores informed 2.6 million customers that the company had experienced a data breach. Plaintiffs’ lawyers seized on the event. Multiple class action lawsuits were filed. Experts predicted hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
The legal department jumped into action. Cybersecurity experts were hired. A forensic investigation was aggressively pursued. Victims were quickly contacted and the public notified.
“Because Michaels was out in front of the data incident and acted swiftly with experts, the public and consumer response to Michaels was positive – in contrast to other retailers who were severely criticized for the crisis management handling,” Hartmann stated.
Five class action lawsuits were filed against Michaels. Three were consolidated into one in federal court in Chicago. A fourth class action proceeded in the Eastern District of New York.
The critical argument was Article III standing. Michaels convinced the federal judges handling the lawsuits to dismiss the litigation because the plaintiffs did not actually suffer any damages as a result of the data breach.
In May 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld dismissal of the New York case, ruling that heightened pleading requirements must be met for standing in data breach cases.
“Exercising swift and creative judgment helped Janie defeat consumers in all of the class action cases filed in the wake of the data breach,” Hartmann says. “In contrast to the other retailer class actions filed after data breaches, Michaels was the only retailer to successfully dismiss cases filed against it.
“Without Janie at the helm, there is no way Michaels would have succeeded at that level on these cases,” Hartmann says.
© 2018 The Texas Lawbook. Content of The Texas Lawbook is controlled and protected by specific licensing agreements with our subscribers and under federal copyright laws. Any distribution of this content without the consent of The Texas Lawbook is prohibited.
If you see any inaccuracy in any article in The Texas Lawbook, please contact us. Our goal is content that is 100% true and accurate. Thank you.