Ask Janie Perelman what she did today at work and be ready to set aside a significant portion of your own day.
Right now, the Michaels Stores assistant general counsel is managing seven class-action/private attorney general lawsuits, 15 separation litigation matters under the Americans with Disabilities Act and a mere 500 general liability cases.
For every case Perelman battles in court, lawyers say she has convinced a dozen others to resolve their disputes with the arts and crafts retailer out of court. She was critically involved when Michaels in 2018 and 2019 closed locations of its Aaron Brothers framing stores and Pat Catan’s craft stores, working with displaced employees and vendors. She develops risk management programs and training for the Irving-based company’s 12,000 managers and employees.
Perelman, a former plaintiff’s lawyer who is board-certified in labor and employment law, is significantly involved in the arts and crafts retailer’s robust pro bono and diversity programs. And her passion about animal rights and animal rescue has reached near-legendary status in the North Texas legal community.
But corporate lawyers throughout Texas and across the U.S. know Perelman for one thing: She successfully guided the $5 billion business through one of the largest data breaches a company has ever faced and Michaels came out unscathed. In 2019, she also served as the company’s interim co-general counsel.
“I love this company and I love Michael’s products – even though I am not very crafty,” she says laughing. “Stability, strong culture and ethics are very important to me, and they are prevalent at Michaels.”
Citing her extraordinary litigation successes and her commitment to the legal profession, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook are pleased to recognize Perelman as a finalist for the 2019 Senior Counsel of the Year Award for a Midsized Legal Department.
ACC-DFW and The Lawbook will honor finalists and announce winners for the 2019 DFW Outstanding Corporate Counsel Awards Jan. 30 at the George W. Bush Presidential Center and Institute.
“Throughout her career, Janie has used creative thinking to improve the process and make her team more efficient,” says Baker McKenzie partner Michelle Hartmann, who nominated 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 leadership.”
Michael Hurst, a partner at Lynn Pinker Cox & Hurst, says Perelman’s achievements are not limited to one case or even one area of law.
“Janie has a proven track record in numerous areas of law, including successfully defeating and obtaining dismissals in class claims, in consumer lawsuits and in multiple wage and hour suits filed in California,” says Hurst, who also nominated Perelman for the award.
“She was instrumental in getting the data breach lawsuits dismissed – not once, but twice,” he says. “Janie’s successes are across the board – all while doing not only her regular job with a limited staff but also co-leading the legal department and representing the legal department in multiple areas.”
Perelman says she runs “a lean litigation team” that includes corporate attorney Amy Scott and herself, though Perelman says she plans to add a lawyer to the litigation group.
“We are incredibly involved in our cases,” she says. “We help develop legal strategy. We read and edit every substantive pleading. We help take witness depositions. I help negotiate settlements.
“We get in the weeds,” she says.
Perelman was born and raised in Brownsville. Her parents – both born in Mexico – 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, including the Mark White for Governor reelection effort and the Dukakis/Bentsen presidential campaign. Two years later, Perelman attended the University of Houston Law Center with an interest in returning to politics.
However, after numerous clerkships and after graduating from law school in 1992,
Perelman joined Hitt & Patterson, a small litigation boutique in Houston, where she represented clients in state and federal courts.
During seven years practicing trial law, she handled fair housing, personal injury, employment and business litigation. She took depositions in the county jail, worked on a tiger mauling lawsuit and a helicopter crash case. She even negotiated employment agreements for those working with the Houston Rockets. About 70% of her clients were the plaintiffs in court.
Perelman scored a $40 million default judgment in a case, though she was never able to collect.
“I literally fell into labor and employment because I was the only female litigator at my firm,” she says. “I would get all the sexual harassment cases, and I realized I really enjoyed labor and employment litigation.”
In 1999, Perelman decided to make a career move and joined the legal department at the airfreight company Kitty Hawk, handling various litigation matters.
“As a plaintiff’s lawyer, I realized how simple it would have been in some cases to avoid the litigation and claims by just treating someone with respect and courtesy,” she says. “I realized that the role of the in-house counsel was not only to defend the company but also to help stop the problems before they start.
“This includes making sure your team members and vendors are treated with respect and fairness and in accordance with the law,” she says. “I have always enjoyed being involved with so many areas of the law, and being in-house enables you to do so. I have worked on so many different types of cases. That experience is invaluable.”
A year later, executives at the large jewelry retailer Zale Corporation were interviewing candidates for a senior in-house legal position when Janie Perelman’s name came up.
Perelman had met Zale’s outside counsel 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 counsel had reported to the general counsel at Zale that I had been fair as opposing counsel.”
She got the job and served as Zale’s associate general counsel for seven years, where she represented the company in numerous proceedings before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and managed all litigation-related matters.
After stints at CEC Entertainment (Chuck E. Cheese) and J.C. Penney, Perelman joined the Michaels Stores legal department in 2010. She’s already been promoted twice.
“I had an opportunity to become a general counsel elsewhere, but I took this job because I loved the work environment here,” she says. “I was attracted to the Michaels job because of the leadership of the organization, my peers and the culture, in addition to the magnitude of work I would be exposed to at Michaels.”
Perelman has not been disappointed.
During the decade she has been at Michaels Stores, Perelman has handled thousands of individual litigation and arbitration matters, successfully defeated a major pricing case and convinced a court to dismiss a large wage and hour class-action lawsuit.
“Janie is creative, approaching fact patterns, witnesses, depositions and legal arguments in unique, fresh ways,” says Stephen Woods, a partner at Ogletree Deakins. “She tirelessly defends her company-client – while also looking for ways to improve policies and decisions.
“Janie is a servant leader,” Woods says. “She doesn’t ask anyone – outside counsel or her internal team – to do anything she hasn’t done or isn’t already doing.”
In 2014, several managers at Michaels Stores in California sued their employer, claiming the company wrongly classified them as exempt employees under California state law. The plaintiffs sought class-action status, which a state judge initially granted.
Perelman and her outside legal team had the case removed to federal court, where the judge assigned to the case declassified the class.
“The (federal) judge suggested picking certain plaintiffs and trying the cases as an attempt to allow both sides to evaluate claims and defenses,” she says. “As such, there was significant importance to the trial. The case was tried just weeks before Christmas, and pulling witnesses in right before Christmas was challenging.”
The Los Angeles judge ruled in Michaels’ favor and “set a significant precedent for future cases,” Perelman says.
“The damages would have been in the millions plus attorneys’ fees had we lost,” she says.
In 2019, Perelman won another major California wage and hour court decision. Michaels faced an employment class action and a suit under the Private Attorney General Act of California that contained several individual claims.
Michaels argued that the plaintiffs are required to pursue their claims in arbitration instead of state court and that the claims must be pursued individually instead of as a class. The judge agreed and also stayed the Private Attorney General action pending the outcome of the arbitration.
Perelman says the decision meant “significant savings to the company in the millions of dollars of potential damages.”
“Janie appreciates that often it takes aggressive action in litigation to achieve the best results,” says Akin Gump partner Greg Knopp. “She is pragmatic and will not fight just for the sake of fighting, but she has very good instincts for knowing when it is time to take a stand or be aggressive.”
Two years ago, Perelman spearheaded a new internal general liability reporting method designed to reduce litigation – and thus reduce litigation costs – by addressing customer complaints and issues more efficiently.
“The streamlined change in operations and organizations cut significant time on stores reporting customer claims and ensured that every complaint, even those without personal injury or property damage, was given a claim number and recorded with a third-party administrator,” says Hartmann.
The goal is early resolution when warranted.
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.
Perelman’s biggest challenge, of course, occurred Jan. 25, 2014. That was the day company officials learned that data of 2.6 million customers had been breached.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers seized on the event. Multiple class-action lawsuits were filed. There were investigations. Experts predicted hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
Perelman and the legal department jumped into action. Cybersecurity experts were hired. A forensic investigation was aggressively pursued. Victims were quickly contacted and the public notified. Michaels immediately offered those customers affected by the breach one year of free credit monitoring.
“Janie was able to persuade the card-issuing banks and networks to engage in pre-suit mediation following the Michaels data breach,” Hartmann stated in her nomination. “Janie’s tactic and persuasive arguments paid off, and the bank-related disputes were successfully settled before costly and public litigation was filed.”
Perelman and Michaels swiftly hired outside counsel and IT-related experts. A press release acknowledging the possibility of a breach was published within hours. Hotlines were quickly set up to take concerned customer’s calls.
Even so, five class-action lawsuits were filed against Michaels. The Illinois cases were consolidated into one matter in federal court in Chicago. The case in New York was voluntarily dismissed but was refiled in the Eastern District of New York following the dismissal of the Illinois actions.
The critical argument, designed by Perelman, the Michael’s legal team and Hartmann, focused on Article III standing. Lawyers for Michaels convinced the federal judges to dismiss the litigation because the plaintiffs did not actually suffer any damages as a result of the data breach.
“None of the plaintiffs incurred fraudulent charges on the cards during the period,” Perelman says. “Only a few plaintiffs signed up for the free credit monitoring.”
In 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld the dismissal, ruling that heightened pleading requirements must be met for standing in data breach cases.
“Because Michaels was out in front of the data incident and acted swiftly, the public and consumer response to Michaels was positive – in contrast to other retailers who were severely criticized for crisis mismanagement,” Hartmann stated.
“By exercising this same skill of swift and creative judgment, Janie defeated consumers in all of the class-action cases filed in the wake of the breach,” Hartmann stated. “Without Janie at the helm, there is no way Michaels would have been so successful, as she came up with a creative argument on causation that permitted the trial and appellate courts to distinguish precedent in the standing context.“
Perelman works with about a dozen law firms doing legal work for Michaels across the country. She says outside counsel need to know her expectations or they will not work for the company for long.
“I am very direct, very forthcoming on my expectations,” she says “I like to have fun but do not tolerate poor work product or lack of responsiveness. I am known for playing devil’s advocate and doing some semi-cross examinations of my team/counsel. I do not take no as an answer well unless all options have been explored.
“I hire outside counsel to recommend a course of action – not to tell me that I could do this or that,” Perelman says. “I already know I could do this or that. I’m paying you to jump off the fence – so jump. I need someone to help me make the decision.”
Hurst says lawyers who work with Perelman need to know one critical thing.
“To say Janie is passionate about animal rescue and preventing animal cruelty is an understatement,” Hurst says. “Her compensation from work goes, first and foremost, to saving animals from harm. At any given time, she is finding rescues and fosters for numerous dogs and cats, as well as paying the cost of others to foster abused, neglected or abandoned animals.”
Perelman agrees “passionate” is the proper word.
“I have helped close to 200 dogs and cats in need of help – from finding new homes to picking up animals in need to fundraising for medical procedures,” she says. “I carry carriers, leashes, food just about everywhere I go, including when I travel, just in case I see a stray.
“Lawyers should use their legal knowledge and skills for the good of people and others – like animals who need help,” Perelman says.