Wrongful Termination

by Mike Farris

Bay Muckleroy is a modern-day Diogenes, looking for an honest man. His problem lies not in the object of his search, but in the venue-he is a partner in Black West & Merriam, the largest law firm in Dallas, Texas, where honest men are scarce. Bay came up through the ranks of the firm at a time when honor and integrity did not constitute character flaws. But times have changed with the influx of lawyers the firm hired laterally from other law firms. Lawyers like Tripp Malloy, who brought with him ten million dollars' worth of legal business and a sacrifice-truth-for-wealth attitude. Infiltrating the power structure of the firm by the threat of taking their clients and moving on if challenged, Malloy and his ilk have brought a new era to the firm, one that Bay finds distasteful. Enter Meg Kelly-a first-year associate who blows the whistle on Malloy's chronic overbilling of clients. What she couldn't possibly know was that something far more sinister was lurking beneath of the surface of those bloated fee statements. Something that Tripp and the firm needed to keep hidden. When she is fired for insubordination, Meg turns to Bay, her mentor, for help. Unaware of the tempest they are about to unleash, he champions her wrongful termination lawsuit against his own firm. But when they stumble onto a truth that threatens not only Tripp Malloy, but the entire law firm, they soon find themselves both in danger of being wrongfully terminated.

302 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2012

About the author

MIKE FARRIS is a 1983 cum laude graduate of Texas Tech University School of Law, where he was an associate editor on the Texas Tech Law Review and was inducted into the prestigious Order of the Coif. Mike joined the Dallas firm of Vincent Lopez Serafino Jenevein, P.C., as Of Counsel in 2010, where his practice includes complex commercial litigation as well as entertainment law, focusing on the movie and publishing industries.
As a literary agent, Mike has placed several award-winning novels for publication, including Balaam Gimble’s Gumption by Mike Nichols, winner of the Texas Institute of Letters John Bloom Humor Award, and Sheldon Russell’s Dreams to Dust: A Tale of the Oklahoma Land Rush, winner of the Langum Prize for Excellence in American Historical Fiction. Mike also represents various university presses and has successfully placed subsidiary rights to their published books, including negotiating the sale of movie rights to producers and Hollywood studios.
Mike was the 2014 Chair of the Dallas Bar’s Sports and Entertainment Law Section, after serving as Vice-Chair in 2011 and previously serving as Chair in 2012 and 2009. He is also the editor of the State Bar of Texas Entertainment and Sports Law Journal and is an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas in its Sports & Entertainment Management MBA program, where he serves on the Sports & Entertainment Advisory Board. He has taught trial advocacy as an adjunct professor at Texas Wesleyan University Law School and creative writing at Richland College in Dallas.
Mike is much in demand as a presenter at writers’ conferences around the country, speaking on topics ranging from legal issues for writers and understanding publishing contracts to principles of cinematic storytelling. He created and taught a seminar sponsored by the Dallas Bar’s Sports and Entertainment Law Section entitled Beyond Briefs: Other Forms of Fiction Writing for Lawyers, and is a regular presenter at the La Jolla Writers Conference. He has taught seminars on the art and craft of adapting source material into screenplays, and has adapted the novels of Air Force U-2 pilot-turned-New York Times-best-selling novelist Patrick A. Davis (novels adapted are The Passenger and A Long Day for Dying), as well as the award-winning novel Balaam Gimble’s Gumption, by Mike Nichols, which was produced as a short film by Dallas’s Blue Logic Productions. As a screenwriter, he is a multi-time semifinalist in the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting and the Page International Screenwriting Awards. In 2014, his script The Catch was a Nicholl semifinalist, placing it in the top 3% out of 7,511 entries.
As a book writer, Mike collaborated with former ABC-TV anchorman Murphy Martin to write Martin’s memoir of his years in journalism, entitled Front Row Seat: A Veteran Reporter Relives the Four Decades That Reshaped America (Eakin Press). In 2009, the University of Oklahoma Press released Call Me Lucky: A Texan in Hollywood, Mike’s collaboration with rodeo cowboy-turned-actor/producer/director Robert Hinkle on Hinkle’s memoir of his years in show business. He is also the author of five published novels: Kanaka Blues (Savant Books), Manifest Intent (Savant Books), Rules of Privilege (Savant Books), The Bequest (Stairway Press), and Wrongful Termination (Untreed Reads). His thriller Every Pig Got a Saturday is set for a winter 2014-2015 release from John M. Hardy Press.

Reviews

[Jo-Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I was getting toward the end, I realized I was holding my breath...

WOW! Read WRONGFUL TERMINATION if you love twists & turns suspense, that is, breathtaking suspense! I enjoyed it tremendously, couldn't put it down until I finished it, and didn't hesitate to take this moment out of the long weekend to highly recommend it.
This is the first book I've read by this author, but I enjoyed it enough to check out some of his other books next.

[Lanelle Duke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of slow in the beginning and middle of the book. I could have done without the relationship between the main characters. Once the trial started, the book picked up and became more interesting. Had some plots twists, but in the end, a predictable ending.