It’s the classic trainwreck of a Biglaw love story that brings us today’s Lawsuit of the Day. Boy who works for a successful law firm reconnects with Girl he knew in college. Girl moves into Boy’s one-bedroom condo, says it’s too small, and convinces Boy to rent an expensive five-bedroom house. Girl, who has no income because she’s working on her art history dissertation, expects a proposal after one year of dating. Boy budgets $40,000 for a ring, but Girl thinks she deserves better. Boy succumbs to Girl’s wishes and spends $100,000 on an engagement ring. Boy and Girl break up less than one year later, and Girl refuses to return the engagement ring. Boy sues, obviously.

The Boy here is Ryan Strasser, an associate in the business litigation practice of Troutman Sanders. The Girl, who allegedly played Boy royally, is Sarah Jones Dickens. According to Strasser’s complaint, Dickens knew exactly what she wanted when it came to her engagement ring: it had to be 3.5 to 5 carats with no fluoresence, and with an inclusion rating of no worse than VS2 and a color rating of no worse than G. The ring Strasser financed with his savings, two credit cards, and a $30,000 personal loan fit all of Dickens’s requirements, and was 4.06 carats. Eleven months later, their relationship crumbled “after a particularly dramatic weekend.”

Law.com has a few of the details on what allegedly went down:

The complaint, alas, is silent on what exactly went wrong. “Eventually, the parties’ relationship soured,” it states. On January 7, 2018, the bottom dropped out. Strasser reports that Dickens called his parents in New Jersey, telling them that he would “not stop crying,” and asked them to come and get him out of the house. His parents came, her parents came, and the dads allegedly worked out a deal. She’d stay in the house a few months longer to finish her dissertation, and give the ring back when she moved out. But then Dickens “abruptly proclaimed that she had changed her mind, that in her and her mother’s view the engagement ring ‘belonged to her’ forever, that she would ‘never give it back,’ that the ‘deal was off,’” the complaint states.

Strasser claims he moved out with only a few of his things, yet kept paying the rent on the house until Dickens moved out — without telling him — leaving one last surprise for him: meat in the refrigerator, which had been turned off for two months. Strasser alleges that the smell was so bad the landlord had to buy a new refrigerator.

Strasser will be stuck paying off the ring until 2020, so he sued Dickens in federal court to try to force her to give it back, under the theory that an engagement ring is a conditional gift (i.e., it must be returned if the marriage doesn’t happen). Strasser is represented by Sheppard Mullin, and we can only imagine how embarrassing it was to recount this tale of being taken to the cleaners by his ex to his fellow Biglaw attorneys.

We’d wish Ryan Strasser the best of luck as he attempts to get his engagement ring back, but his lawyers may wind up costing him about as much as the rock he’s suing over. If he wins, he’ll get to pay off his legal fees with the proceeds from the sale of the ring he had to file suit over. This story doesn’t have a happy ending.

(Flip to the next page to read Strasser’s lawsuit in full.)

Ouch, Babe. Big Law Associate Sues Ex-Fiancee Over $100K Engagement Ring [Law.com]

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.