AKRON, Ohio — Former Akron Art Museum employee Amanda Crowe filed a lawsuit Friday in Summit County Court of Common Pleas against the museum and former museum director Mark Masuoka, claiming that she had been libeled and wrongfully laid off from employment.
Attorney R. Scott Haley, representing Crowe, wrote in the filing that Masuoka libeled, slandered and defamed Crowe by loudly and publicly criticizing her at a June 1, 2019, event Crowe had organized at the museum’s outdoor space.
The filing said that Masuoka falsely stated that “the event was not properly planned, had inadequate staffing and security,’’ and that he told Crowe “he was kicking the dog (her) and she should kick the dogs below her.”
The lawsuit also claims that Masuoka falsely accused Crowe during a June 4, 2019, staff meeting of having organized the June 1 event after cancer-causing chemicals had been sprayed on the grass.
A second claim in the lawsuit states that the Akron Art Museum committed fraud and unlawfully retaliated against Crowe by laying her off on March 30.
The layoff followed Crowe’s participation in an internal investigation of workplace violations in the summer of 2019 by a team of lawyers hired by the museum’s board of trustees.
The investigation was triggered by an unsigned letter of complaint sent by 27 current and former employees to the museum’s board of trustees in June 2019. The letter alleged a history of racism, sexism and bullying of employees by managers during Masuoka’s tenure.
Crowe’s filing said that lawyers for Kastner, Westman & Wilkins, who were conducting the investigation, assured her that “no retaliatory actions would be taken’’ against her by the Akron Art Museum for participating in the investigation.
Yet Crowe said that over the following year, she was “systematically subjected to new and overbearing oversight, criticism, reductions of resources for her projects, diminishment of her ability to facilitate family events, disciplinary action and other unjustified and unwarranted harassment.”
The museum has denied any employees were laid off in retaliation for having participated in the letter of complaint. Instead, the museum said reductions in staffing were caused by financial hardships related to the coronavirus pandemic.
Masuoka, who became the museum’s director in 2013, resigned May 18. On May 19, through his lawyer, he denied the allegations in the 2019 complaint, which included a description of the “cancer grass” episode involving Crowe, who was not cited by name in the letter.
Crowe, the museum’s former associate educator, and Jessica Fijalkovich, the former library and archives manager, said publicly on May 15 that they had heard Masuoka use racist coded language during a meeting at the museum in May 2019.
Crowe and Fijalkovich also said they were among the 27 employees who anonymously sent the letter of complaint to museum trustees in 2019. They said they were the source of a quotation taken from the meeting and provided in the anonymous 2019 letter, in which Masuoka reportedly said: “I mean, really, how many people in Akron actually have access to a cellphone? And if they do it’s probably a gangster throwaway phone.’’
Masuoka has denied he used racist coded language.
Crowe’s lawsuit seeks compensatory damages in excess of $25,000, plus punitive damages, attorney fees and court costs for both of the two counts in her filing.
Masuoka’s attorney, Benjamin Rudolph Delson, said Friday he had not yet seen the filing, and declined to comment. The museum also declined to comment Friday afternoon.