Birmingham Radio: David DuBose Files Lawsuit Against Summit

David DuBose

Birmingham radio executive David DuBose says officials with the media company he built, including a close friend he trusted enough to his son's godfather, conspired to fire him last month, according to a lawsuit DuBose filed Monday.

According to al.com, the lawsuit says, DuBose put together the Summit Media radio group while his business partner and Summit's future CEO Carl Parmer was traveling in Paris and playing golf in Augusta. DuBose was subsequently released on May 13, the one-year-anniversary of the close of Summit's purchase of 27 radio stations from the Cox Media Group, including seven stations in the Birmingham market.

Summit Media has denied DuBose's allegations.

Before becoming chief operating officer at Summit Media, DuBose previously worked as vice president and Birmingham market manager for Cox Media, where he oversaw some of the top stations in the market and made headlines by boasting that sports-talk radio star Paul Finebaum would leave WJOX 94.5 FM to join a Cox-owned sports station that later went off the air.

Last year, DuBose filed a separate lawsuit against Cox, claiming the company owed him more than $300,000 in unpaid "special retention bonus" pay for staying with the company until its sale to Summit Media became final. That lawsuit is still pending in federal court.

DuBose's lawsuit names Summit Media and Parmer as co-defendants and seeks an unspecified amount of damages.

According to the lawsuit, when DuBose learned in July 2012 that Cox intended to sell several of its stations, he approached Parmer -- with whom DuBose had worked at radio and TV stations in Tuscaloosa, Montgomery and Birmingham, as well as with the Heftel Broadcasting Company in Dallas -- about putting together an investment group to buy the Cox stations.

DuBose says in the lawsuit that his "experience, contacts and relationships inside Cox Media Group, as well as in the broadcasting industry, were indispensable and critical elements in putting together" Summit's purchase of the Cox stations and making the deal a reality.

DuBose verbally agreed to a contract with Summit that would guarantee his position as COO for a minimum of five years and pay him an annual base salary of $318,000, plus bonuses and benefits that included health insurance, vacation time and a car, the lawsuit says.

While DuBose never signed a written contract with Summit, he was assured by Parmer on several occasions that a formal agreement was in the works, according to the lawsuit.

Then, on May 13 of this year, DuBose was called into a meeting with Parmer and Summit Media senior vice president/programming Bill Tanner and told that Summit Media had decided to go "in a different direction" and did not need "someone with your skill sets," according to the lawsuit.

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