A woman has settled her lawsuit against the Hollywood Pantages Theatre and Cal Ned Inc. in which she alleged she was fired from her marketing job because she suffered from depression and complained about the companies’ failure to accommodate her.
Sarah Smallman also contended she was required to work in a noisy work environment inside the theater in which colleagues loudly socialized while playing TikTok videos. Her Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit alleged disability discrimination, failure to prevent discrimination, retaliation, failure to accommodate and engage in the interactive process and a number of violations of the state Labor Code.
On Sept. 2, Smallman’s attorneys filed a notice of “unconditional” settlement with Judge Nicholas Daum informing him of the accord. The same lawyers brought additional court papers with the same judge on Monday asking him to dismiss the case “with prejudice,” meaning it cannot be refiled. No terms were divulged.
In their previous court papers, defense attorneys denied Smallman’s allegations and said they were barred by the statute of limitations as well as “dishonest and/or fraudulent conduct” on the plaintiff’s part.
According to her suit, Smallman was hired as a marketing assistant in March 2022 and she told a supervisor that despite having chronic depression and anxiety, she could perform her duties. But from the beginning, that boss and other supervisors asked her to work through her lunches in exchange for meal break premiums that were never provided, the suit stated.
Smallman worked in a “lively, loud and bustling work environment located in the most bustling intersection in Los Angeles” and her colleagues often spent much of their days socializing loudly and recording TikTok videos for their personal social media accounts, according to the suit, which further states that the plaintiff’s duties in contrast were almost entirely performed online from her computer.
“It was a distracting and loud work environment for everyone, including for plaintiff,” according to the complaint.
Smallman’s job included operating the company’s social media pages, creating, planning and executing online influencer campaigns aimed at drawing larger audiences to the theater, and coordinating influencer and celebrity attendance at red carpet events.
The same supervisor to whom Smallman had spoken about the plaintiff’s depression subsequently began “verbally antagonizing” Smallman for attending psychiatric therapy and near the end of 2023 asked her to stop going to the sessions so she could work more, the suit alleged.
When Smallman asked the boss whether she could go home early one day in February because her depression had flared up, the supervisor “angrily stood up from her chair, ripped off her N95 mask, threw it across the room, then approached within inches of plaintiff’s face while aggressively waving her arms and screaming objections to plaintiff’s medical need to go home,” according to the suit brought in August 2024.
On her provider’s advice, Smallman later sought accommodations for her condition that would allow her to work from home two days weekly. Smallman says the requests were not provided and she was instead given an alternative work plan she could not accept. Smallman also says she filed complaints in April with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the California Civil Rights Dept.
Smallman was fired in May 2024 and told it was because she was “no longer what they were looking for” and offered $7,500 to release her employers from all future claims, but the plaintiff refused to sign the document, which included a confidentiality agreement not to talk about her work experiences, the suit stated.