A former media consultant has withdrawn a sexual harassment lawsuit filed earlier this month against Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. and is now accusing her attorneys of embellishing the allegations.
The woman, identified in the lawsuit as Jane Doe, sent an email Oct. 20 to her attorneys, Carl Douglas and Maryann Gallagher, demanding they dismiss the case immediately, according to a copy of the email released by the city of Inglewood. Doe does not deny all of the allegations in the lawsuit in her email, but alleges that her attorneys included inaccurate portions that she previously told them to correct.
“I’m deeply disturbed with the lies and embellishments that were submitted,” she wrote.
In her email, Doe denies that she is depressed or that she suffered physical, emotional or mental pain. She says she never retained doctors or counselors, as the lawsuit indicates. And she insists Butts did not ruin her life.
“Mayor Butts was NEVER violent with me and he did NOT lure me to City Hall,” Doe wrote. “I have no idea where you came up with these narratives.”
Asked for correction previously
Doe states she requested corrections to similar language after the attorneys submitted a $5 million claim for damages — a precursor to the lawsuit — against Inglewood in March, but that her attorneys did not make the changes before filing the complaint earlier this month.
The email originally was attached to a formal letter sent by Inglewood’s attorney, Mira Hashmall, to Douglas and Gallagher, demanding the attorneys retract the litigation.
Gallagher submitted a request for dismissal on behalf of Doe two days after the email was sent. Gallagher did not return a call for comment.
Douglas declined to comment specifically about the case at his client’s request and instead provided a general statement to address the allegation.
He stated he has been a practicing lawyer for 42 years and has represented hundreds of clients.
“In all those years, there has never been another client who has ever suggested that I would violate the oath that I took to my office by filing a lawsuit that was without my client’s authorization,” he stated. “I would never have been able to earn the reputation as one of the Top 100 lawyers in California for 2021, a state with more than 260,000 lawyers, if I practiced law in the manner she alleges.”
The original lawsuit accused the city of turning a blind eye to the mayor’s use of city funds to hire women he wanted to have sex with and his subsequent sexual harassment of them. It alleged the city’s senior administrators did not take “allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault seriously” and instead enabled Butts’ actions. Doe alleges she was sexually harassed by the mayor while working for the city as a media consultant under a $10,000 contract.
The lawsuit alleges she lost out on a permanent job after asking the mayor about other reports of sexual harassment.
Malicious prosecution?
City officials say Doe never worked for Inglewood and that she completed her contract without any issues. She was passed over for a job prior to receiving the consulting gig because she did not submit the appropriate paperwork, according to Inglewood’s attorneys.
Inglewood is now threatening to sue Douglas and Gallagher for “malicious prosecution,” which would require the city to prove the attorneys knowingly made the allegations without having probable cause. Hashmall attached Doe’s email — which Doe sent to Butts and Hashmall as well — to an Oct. 25 letter that warned that Inglewood’s damages were “mounting.”
“You cannot just ‘wait out’ the consequences of your wrongful actions,” Hashmall wrote in the letter. “Every minute you maintained the case on file — despite clear, repeated directives from Jane Doe to dismiss it — is further evidence of your malice.”
Trying to extort city
In a statement, Hashmall accused Douglas and Gallagher of trying to extort the city by using the allegations to push for an early settlement.
She also alleged the attorneys hoped to use Doe’s lawsuit to lend credence to a separate lawsuit they filed on behalf of Butts’ former assistant, Melanie McDade-Dickens, who was in a relationship with the mayor but was terminated from the city after they broke up.
“From the beginning, we knew the allegations attributed to Jane Doe against Mayor Butts and the City of Inglewood were false. What we did not know until recently is that Jane Doe told her attorneys the allegations in the March 2021 claim for damages were false, and they nevertheless proceeded to file additional complaints with those same false allegations,” Hashmall stated.
“The City Council takes this attempt to extort taxpayers’ funds very seriously and will determine what its legal response will be to hold Carl Douglas and Maryann Gallagher accountable for their actions.”