A woman is suing Paramount Pictures Corp. and Paramount Global, alleging the vice president who supervises her has relentlessly harassed her sexually with inappropriate comments and vulgar texts while also making unwarranted comments about other female employees.
The plaintiff is identified only as Jane Doe in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit, which alleges sexual harassment, hostile work environment, negligence, negligent retention, retaliation and intentional infliction of emotional distress. She seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
A Paramount representative did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the suit filed Wednesday.
“Plaintiff was continuously made to feel self-conscious, embarrassed, intimidated, dehumanized … and extremely uncomfortable at work each day at work, as a result of (her supervisor’s) conduct and behavior and defendant … Paramount Pictures’ failure to prevent such conduct,” the suit states.
Doe was hired in 2017 and reported directly to a Paramount vice president, who two years later transferred her to XYi Design, a Paramount vendor that provided marketing and design services. While doing work for XYi, Doe continued to be at the Paramount office with the vice president as her supervisor.
According to Doe, her boss “persistently subjected plaintiff Doe to his intrusive and unwelcome gaze, leering at her body and making inappropriate sexual remarks about her figure. His offensive scrutiny compelled plaintiff to drape a sweater around her waist in a desperate attempt to shield herself from his predatory eyes.”
However, Doe’s efforts were mostly ineffective against her supervisor’s “relentless” misconduct, the suit alleges, as he sent her numerous texts with a sexual and often vulgar tone, including “I really love you, please know that,” the suit states.
The boss solicited Doe to join him on a work trip to Las Vegas and hinted they would have sex there, and another time sent him a photo of a woman who also worked for him and called her his “number 2,” suggesting that Doe was his “number 1,” the suit states.
The boss allegedly also made inappropriate remarks about other female employees, including an older worker who he reportedly insinuated was acting strangely because of hormone issues.
The plaintiff went on maternity leave and when she returned, the boss made outlandish comments about her figure both positive and negative, the suit alleges.
“This conduct culminated in a severe and unjust limitation of plaintiff’s work responsibilities, predicated on (the supervisor’s) discriminatory belief that her status as a mother rendered her incapable of fulfilling certain job functions,” according to the suit, which further alleges that “in a further display of audacity, (the supervisor) later confessed to deliberately curtailing her duties as a means to test her and to ensure her dedication to the job, revealing a blatant disregard for her professional capabilities and rights.”
Doe says her boss also repeatedly intimated to plaintiff that he had informants throughout the office, poised to relay any spoken word back to him, fostering an “atmosphere of intimidation and surveillance,” the suit further alleges.