Julie Swetnick, one of the women who has accused US Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, has an extensive history of involvement in legal disputes, including a lawsuit in which an ex-employer accused her of falsifying her college and work history on her job application.
Legal documents from Maryland, Oregon and Florida provide a partial picture of a woman who stepped into the media glare amid the battle over Kavanaugh’s nomination for the nation’s highest court.
Court records reviewed by reporters showed Swetnick has been involved in at least six legal cases over the past 25 years.
Records in the lawsuit filed in late 2000 by Oregon-based software company Webtrends do not indicate why it was dismissed.
Her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, told reporters that court cases involving her have no bearing on the credibility of her claims about Kavanaugh.
Avenatti said there was a settlement in the case, but no money changed hands.
In its civil complaint in a state court in Oregon, the company said Swetnick, a software engineer, was an employee for a few weeks before its human resources department received a report that she had engaged in “unwelcome sexual innuendo and inappropriate conduct” toward two male coworkers at a business lunch.
The lawsuit said that Swetnick in turn accused Webtrends of subjecting her to “physically and emotionally threatening and hostile conditions” and that she claimed that she had been sexually harassed by four coworkers.
The coworkers denied the allegations, the suit said.
Company officials later determined that Swetnick had provided false information on her employment application, the suit said.
Swetnick was on the other side of a civil case in 1994, as a plaintiff, when she filed a personal injury lawsuit in Maryland against the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. She claimed she lost more than US$420,000 in earnings after she hurt her nose in a fall on a train in 1992.
To support her claim for lost wages, Swetnick named “Konam Studios” as one of the companies promising to employ her.
A court filing identified Nam Ko, a representative of “Kunam Studios,” as a possible plaintiff’s witness for her case.
However, Ko on Friday said that he was just a friend of Swetnick’s and that he had never owned a company with a name spelled either way and had never agreed to pay her money for any work before she injured her nose.
Avenatti told reporters that he “fully vetted” Swetnick before helping her take her claims against Kavanaugh public.
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