Jordan A. Thomas advises employers on proper handling of a whistleblower complaint

TPG Capital's legal fight with its former spokesman, Adam Levine, may seem a bit lopsided.

After all, TPG Capital manages $67 billion as one of the largest private equity firms in the world. Levine is, well, just one man.

But Levine holds at least one possible ace: Jordan Thomas, the lead attorney for Levine, joined law firm Labaton Sucharow after working at the SEC, where he helped craft the regulatory agency's whistleblower program. Thomas also represented another self-described whistleblower in a case against a hedge fund in which the fund settled with the SEC for more than $2 million.

Thomas told Buyouts that TPG's move to sue Levine after he warned the firm about alleged mishandling of how certain expenses were billed amounts to a "textbook example of how not to handle a whistleblower complaint."