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"I would like to personally apologize to Julie" certainly sounds like an admission that the company wronged her.

And don't lawyers frequently tell their clients not to apologize (even if they feel they ought to), since that may be construed as an admission of wrongdoing in a subsequent legal proceeding?

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That's the standard advice, but things are changing after recent empirical work found that doctors who apologized for mistakes ended up paying out less in malpractice claims than those who didn't.

The cheapest way to win a lawsuit is for it never to be filed in the first place.

If anything, "I would like to personally apologize to Julie" would mean that defunkt personally wronged her, not the company.

Maybe he's just sorry because she's obviously hurt and things didn't work out for the best?

If a CEO writes on his company's web site, it's usually understood to mean that he is speaking on behalf of the company.

In any case, the company did wrong her by allowing an environment to exist in which these kinds of behaviors were tolerated. The actions that the CEO took today should have been taken a long time ago.

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