Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations.
The sexual harassment lawsuit filed against the owner of Shipley Do-Nuts this month is the latest in an ongoing legal fight between the doughnut maker and other former workers over an alleged fraud scheme.
Three women claim Lawrence Shipley III routinely groped them and used racial slurs for Hispanics in a lawsuit filed in Harris County district court earlier this month.
He has flatly denied those allegations, and says the women are retaliating against his company after it fired a former plant manager for allegedly steering more than $1 million worth of contracts to distribution companies he owned.
Shipley sued Julian Garcia, the plant manager, for the alleged fraud scheme in September.
“These people were employed and cared for by my family for over 20 years,” Lawrence Shipley wrote last week. “What they are doing now is nothing more than hateful retaliation for becoming corrupt, entitled and self-serving.”
Murphy Klasing, who is representing Shipley Do-Nuts, said he was unsure of exactly what roles Esmeralda Sanchez, Martha Garcia and Elizabeth Peralta played in Julian Garcia’s alleged scheme.
See here for the background. I don’t see any reason to believe Shipley’s claims about his accusers, but one way or another the story will come out. In the meantime, I’m still not buying any of his donuts.