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| Maggie Fuller |
The Norwalk Reflector reports Fuller left the station one year ago after the station owners declined to discipline another WNIR host who was reported to have referred to her using a crude anatomical reference at a public event.
When interviewed about her exit last year, Fuller warned, “I’m going after them. I’m not going to take this laying down.”
The lawsuit, filed this week and assigned to Summit County Common Pleas Judge Amy Corrigall Jones, accuses the owners of abetting unlawful discriminatory practices, causing Fuller to lose $38,000 a year in income plus benefits, as well as suffer mental anguish, humiliation and loss of reputation.
The suit asks that Fuller be reinstated at the station and compensated for lost wages, or if not reinstated, given lost income as well as “future wages and benefits.” It also seeks $50,000 in compensatory and punitive damages.
Maggie Fuller, the on-air pseudonym of Nancy Jones of Kent, was hired by WNIR in 1999 and joined the morning crew, where banter “required” her to “endure a degree of sexual innuendo with her male colleagues.”
But defendent Bill Klaus had always instructed employees that there were limits on language that would be permitted on air, in public and in the workplace, “including avoidance of obscene and hateful terms,” the suit says.
Beginning April 2013, according to the lawsuit, host John “Couchburner” Denning repeatedly treated Fuller with hostility and disrespect on air and shut off Fuller’s microphone to prevent her from speaking during joint broadcasts, while the Klaus brothers tolerated and encouraged Denning’s behavior.
During the summer of 2013, the station sponsored “patio parties” to give listeners an opportunity to mingle with staff. At such a party Aug. 29, the lawsuit said, Denning was in a conversation with WNIR fans when he repeatedly called Fuller the “c” word.
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