ROLLONFRIDAY STORY, 11TH MARCH 2005
Freshfields Toblerone theft scandal
A Freshfields associate is frantically buffing up his CV after being bollocked in front of his firm's worldwide litigation team for "borrowing" and eating a bar of chocolate.
Litigators from FBD's offices across the world met up in Zurich last Friday for their annual conference. In a bid to break the ice, chief executive Hugh Crisp split them into teams and started off proceedings with a quiz. He awarded the winning team a gigantic bar of Toblerone, which they left in the centre of their table during the morning seminar until everyone broke for lunch. When they returned, the chocolate had disappeared.
Crisp's requests for information as to the whereabouts of the confection were met with silence, and the seminar was postponed until it could be tracked down. The hotel's management was contacted, who were sufficiently worried about upsetting their most important client to make announcements over the public address system. Eventually it emerged that a junior associate from the firm's Berlin office had been seen with the chocolate in a lift, and he was summoned before the entire room to confess. The conversation went as follows:
Partner: "But you weren't on our team! Why did you remove it?"
Associate: "I was worried someone might steal it".
P: "Where is it now?"
A: "It's in my room".
P: "Go and get it".
(Snivelling junior associate doesn't move)
P: "Well?"
A: "The thing is, I opened it."
P: "You opened it?"
A: "Yes, I was hungry."
P: "You ATE it?"
A: "Not all of it."
P: "This is a disgrace. I don't believe your stories about taking it for safe keeping. I think you stole that Toblerone bar. Jo Rickard [Freshfields' global head of litigation] will be investigating this when you get back to Berlin."
Jill Janney, Freshfields' head of Dispute Resolution practice development and organiser of the conference, made light of the incident. "Clearly the Toblerone was just too tempting. But with a hotel full of litigators, he was never going to get away with it!"