Law firm handling investigation of Guess co-founder Paul Marciano steps down

By

Cassidy Mantor

Published
Mar 14, 2018

According to an SEC filing, the law firm that was handling the investigation of Guess, Inc.'s co-founder Paul Marciano's sexual assault allegations has stepped away from the case.

In a regulatory filing made earlier this week, the law firm of record announced it was handing over the investigation to the firm Glaser Well. Glaser Well is the firm that served as special counsel to the committee Guess formed to investigate the allegations against Marciano that were brought in January by model Kate Upton.

Upton modeled for Guess from 2010 - 2011. Earlier this year, she alleged in an interview with Time that when she was 18, Marciano assaulted her by grabbing her breasts under the premise of seeing if they were real.

On January 31, in the midst the Me Too social media movement, Upton posted to her Instagram and Twitter, "It’s disappointing that such an iconic women’s brand [Guess] is still empowering Paul Marciano as their creative director."

Upton added the hashtag of Me Too to her post, aligning her story with the movement designed to put an end to men using their positions of power to take advantage of women in the workplace.

On February 7th, Upton again posted "I'm not going to let him intimidate me anymore," speaking about Marciano. In her interview with Time, Upton claimed that after she declined Marciano's advances, she was notified by her agency that she had been fired by Guess because, purportedly because she had gotten fat.

Marciano denies the allegations but has stepped down from Guess' daily operations to allow for the investigation.

Since Upton went public with the allegations in January, Guess' stock has dropped close to 20 percent.