Auto dealer “Dealin” Doug Moreland today promised to fight the latest salvo from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that accuses his companies of firing a female employee who took part in an earlier lawsuit.
“We’re going to contest this all the way,” Moreland told The Denver Post. “We’ll be fighting this vigorously. I’d rather pay an attorney than to pay for something I didn’t do.”
Moreland Automotive Group LLLP and other interrelated auto dealerships and financing companies are accused in a lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court of terminating Lucille Fancher in June 2008 after she accepted money as part of a settlement in an earlier EEOC lawsuit she participated in.
That lawsuit, filed in 2006, alleged the companies — Moreland, Kids’ Financial, Inc. doing business as C.A.R. Finance, Kids’ Automotive Inc., and Brandon Financial Inc. — had fostered a sexually hostile work environment and fired employees who complained.
Moreland said the case was settled on the advice of his insurance company.
“I refused to settle it but we had to,” he said.
Moreland said Fancher was a long-time employee — “a very good employee,” he said — who was let go from a part-time position at Kids’ Financial they no longer needed.
The other companies have no employees.
“How can you discriminate against employees when you have no employees?” he said.
In the earlier lawsuit from 2006, EEOC charged the companies with allowing a sexually hostile work environment that included lewd comments and pornographic materials on work computers, then retaliating against employees who reported sexual harassment to management.
The case settled for $70,000.
