Employees gripe. That’s just a fact, and there is something about collective bitching that is cathartic and can even bond teams together. And law firms, with the long hours and demanding work, can be hotbeds of kvetching, but the complainers rarely consider their complaints may be the basis of a lawsuit.

California trial attorney Philip Layfield, joined by his firm, has filed a defamation claim against 25 John Does over anonymous comments they left online about Layfield, his current firm of Layfield & Barrett, and his former firm of Layfield & Wallace. Our network of tipsters is mighty, and we’ve gotten our hands on a third-party subpoena served upon Glassdoor.com, a jobs and recruiting website, that allows users to post anonymous reviews of places they are current or former employees of, in order to provide an assessment of the working environment for job seekers. The subpoena seeks the identifying information of several users who have taken to this anonymous online forum to complain about their allegedly miserable work.

The subpoena seeks the authors of the following 12 posts:

Some of the posts have been taken down, but just a quick skim of the titles gives a sense of how these employees felt about their time working for Layfield. Although there are other, wholly positive reviews of working with Layfield, there seems to be at least a virulent strain of employees who just do not like working there.

It is unclear how Glassdoor will respond to the subpoena; we have reached out to them for comment and have not heard back. The site does note, however, that “[y]our trust is our top concern, so companies can’t alter or remove reviews.” Update 05/17/16 10:27 a.m.: Dawn Lyon, vice president of corporate affairs for Glassdoor has responded to our request for comment:

As a rule, we do not comment on the specifics of pending litigation. I can tell you that Glassdoor fundamentally believes our users have a constitutional right under the First Amendment to share their opinions about their jobs and work environments without fear of retaliation. This level of transparency empowers people to make more informed decisions about where they choose to work, and it also helps employers attract the right candidates for their culture and company. Occasionally, company management doesn’t like what employees and/or former employees have to say, and they attempt to sue Glassdoor and/or our anonymous users, often requesting that we divulge the identity of our anonymous user. It is our standard practice to fight on our users’ behalf to protect their anonymity and rights to free speech. If necessary, we vigorously fight in court to prevent any user information from being disclosed.

Looks like this will be anything but an open-and-shut case, and Glassdoor is behind employees’ right to bitch.

We reached Layfield for comment, and boy oh boy does he have one. The statement is provided in full below, because wow it is glorious (I have added emphasis to my very favorite passage):

With respect to the lawsuit filed, here is the reality. Our law firm has approximately 150 employees and 35 attorneys. We demand the best of the best. Many people lie about their skills, their experience and their desire to be the best when the interview. We pay top dollar for candidates and many of our attorneys earn in excess of $1 million per year. When people are lazy or incompetent, they either quit because the writing is on the wall or they are terminated. Unfortunately, most of those people are unwilling to recognize their shortcomings and they turn to anonymous blogs to spit their venom. The reality is that they should be upset with their parents for raising lazy and incompetent young adults, but they choose to spew false information on blogs such as Glassdoor. The majority of these posts contain blatantly false information. We are going to obtain the identities of these cowards and bring them to justice. These people are going to have to answer for their conduct and we will shine a light on this very cowardly practice that has become an epidemic. People need to realize that just because you are sitting anonymously behind a keyboard, you can’t break the law. Ultimately, future employers will have to decide whether they want to employ people who post false and hateful information about former employers. The same way that Glassdoor operates as a hate forum for disgruntled employees, employers have a right to know information about job applicants. Unfortunately, most employers are too busy to spend time posting negative information about former employees on job sites, although that would probably do a lot of good for society. For example, I would love to post information about employees who graduated law school, but can’t put two sentences together, or those that are sick at least one day every week. We will not give any further comments until the case is over.

Welp, there is definitely no love lost between these parties.

(Read the full subpoena on the next page.)