More than two years after its filing, advertising executive Gary Heathcott’s lawsuit against his former partners at the major Little Rock marketing firm CJRW is emerging from the COVID-19 deep freeze.
After more than a year in limbo, with many courts shut down for months, a pretrial hearing date has been set for 9:30 a.m. Sept. 10 before Pulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox, and mediation appears to be on the horizon.
The breach-of-contract suit was filed in December 2018.
The judge has called for mediation, “if utilized,” to begin at least 30 days before the pretrial hearing, according to court filings.
Reached at his current home near San Antonio, Heathcott told Whispers he had no comment beyond acknowledging that the case was back in motion.
In an email, CJRW CEO Darin Gray said he would not comment on the case beyond noting that the scheduling order from Dec. 2 “sets a pretrial hearing for 9/10/21 and a mediation deadline, if utilized, of 30 days before the pre-trial hearing, i.e., August 10, 2021. The jury trial date will be set by separate order.”
Heathcott sued CJRW, one of the state’s top ad agencies, after being expelled from the firm’s Main Street offices in September 2018, accused of outrageous and abusive verbal exchanges with colleagues and clients.
Heathcott, who allied with CJRW when it bought the business list of Heathcott & Associates of Little Rock in late 2014 and took him on as a consultant, claims CJRW is refusing to pay him what he’s owed after severing his five-year contract early.
CJRW says Heathcott violated agency policies and professional propriety with consistent verbal harassment of associates and inappropriate sexual remarks and bad language. Heathcott responded at the time by calling those allegations untrue or exaggerated.
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