« Bong Hits Case Goes Up in Smoke |
Main
| Sneak Peek: Top-ranked EDD Vendors »
Cadwalader's Bed Bug Solution
Bugs have been found in the New York office of white-shoe law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. They are not of the eavesdropping kind, but of the bothersome, itch-inducing bed bug kind. At the blog Abovethelaw.com, David Lat has the memo sent yesterday to all New York staff from chairman Robert O. Link Jr.
According to the memo, said bed bugs were found not in beds, but in the 33rd floor word-processing department. In a paragraph that could only -- as Lat observes -- have been written by a lawyer, Link advises:
"We immediately arranged with Assured Environments, a full-service integrated pest management firm operating in the metro NY area for over 70 years and a specialist in the treatment of bed bugs, to review our problem and make recommendations on both short and long-term solutions."
The short-term solution: remove the box from whence said bugs emerged. And remove the person who brought the box. There was a guilty party, the memo suggests, who brought the bed bugs into the firm. That person, Link adds, "is no longer associated with the firm."
Link goes on -- again sounding every bit the lawyer:
"Bed bugs, while not usually found in a work environment, can cause uncomfortable itching. They do not show themselves during daylight hours, only at night in the dark. ... The best evidence of bed bugs is not the actual bugs but the waste material left behind that is either a dark brown or reddish color."
He later concludes:
"Other reports of insects -- which we receive periodically in an office environment -- have been carefully investigated and, in each instance, were identified as fruit flies or gnats."
So there you have it: short- and long-term strategic planning and solutions, application of the best-evidence rule, and careful ongoing investigation -- all in a day's work for a major law firm responding to a bed bug crisis. Meanwhile, Cadwalader's fruit flies and gnats are resting easy.
Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on June 26, 2007 at 06:15 PM | Permalink
| Comments (3)