A woman is suing Nederlander West Coast LLC, alleging she was terminated in May from her marketing job because she suffered from depression and had complained about the company's failure to accommodate her.
Sarah Smallman also says she was required to work in a noisy work environment inside the Pantages Theatre in which colleagues loudly socialized while playing TikTok videos. Her Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit alleges 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. Smallman seeks unspecified damages.
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A Nederlander representative did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the suit brought Wednesday.
Smallman was hired as a marketing assistant for the live entertainment producer 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 states.
Nederlander's office is inside the Hollywood Boulevard theater, meaning the plaintiff had to work in a "lively, loud and bustling work environment located in the most bustling intersection in Los Angeles."
Moreover, Smallman's colleagues often spent much of each workday recording TikTok videos for their personal social media accounts and loudly socializing, while the plaintiff's duties were almost entirely performed online from her computer, the suit states.
"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 alleges.
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.
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 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 May 9 and told it was because she was "no longer what they were looking for" and offered to pay her $7,500 to release Nederlander from all future claims, but the plaintiff refused to sign the document, which included a confidentiality agreement not to talk about her experiences working at Nederlander, the suit states.
Smallman has suffered financial losses and also experienced emotional distress since her termination, the suit states.
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