Four-decade Little Rock advertising executive Gary Heathcott, now of San Antonio, followed through with a breach-of-contract lawsuit yesterday against his former associates at CJRW, the firm that ejected him from his offices and his accounts last fall over allegations of abrasive behavior and sexist remarks.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Pulaski County Circuit Court, seeks $1.3 million in damages and punitive damages over the Little Rock agency’s breaking a consulting deal made and revised several times in the wake of CJRW’s news-making acquisition of Heathcott & Associates’ client list in late 2015.
Eventually under the deal, Heathcott was being paid $234,000 a year plus commissions and expenses, and Heathcott considered it a bargain for CJRW because of the business he brought in, including several mentioned in Tuesday’s complaint. The suit, filed by Heathcott attorney Stephen W. Jones, listed the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery, the Arkansas Economic Development Commission and the Arkansas Health Care marketplace as Heathcott clients.
Heathcott did not respond to texted requests for comment.
More: Read the full lawsuit.
CJRW said last year that Heathcott’s unprofessional behavior toward colleagues and clients — an episode involving foul language with a lottery official being the most prominent allegation — forced the firm’s hand. CEO Darin Gray said the behavior violated the agency’s employee handbook guidelines. Heathcott’s lawsuit says he knew of no handbook and in any case was a consultant, not an employee.
Heathcott is known in part for leading Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s advertising in his first gubernatorial campaign, and has been a colorful figure in Little Rock ad circles for 40 years.
The suit, first reported by Arkansas Times, outlines Heathcott’s association with CJRW and includes contracts and revisions, as well as a timeline of his ouster from the firm’s headquarters on Main Street more than a year ago. It says that Gray “solicited female employees to make complaints of Harassment against Heathcott” as a pretext to breaking the contract.
But an Arkansas Business article revealing the breakup of Heathcott and CJRW found more than a half-dozen witnesses who described boorish and drunken behavior and sometimes abusive language, and Heathcott’s removal from the lottery account was discussed in email communications Arkansas Business obtained through state Freedom of Information Act requests.
The suit says CJRW’s board fired him in November 2017 and that Heathcott was told by the agency’s human resources director that no complaints had been filed against him previously. It also says the firm disabled his personal laptop computer without authorization, which the suit calls “computer trespass.”
Mark Raines, CJRW’s senior vice president/director of public relations, gave Arkansas Business the same response he gave Arkansas Times:
“We do not provide response to potential or pending litigation.”
The lawsuit, in Judge Tim Fox’s court, seeks a jury trial.
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