Inntopia, a Stowe-based tech firm, faced two sexual misconduct complaints. Photo by Anne Galloway/VTDigger
Inntopia, a tech firm based in Stowe, has agreed to pay $60,000 to a contract worker and accept a judgment against the company for the alleged sexual misconduct of a top executive. The court has also ruled that Inntopia pay the woman’s legal fees.
The civil suit alleged that Trevor Crist, the founder of Inntopia, Craig DeLuca and others at the firm promoted a culture in which sexual harassment was “explicitly condoned, supported, tolerated, forgiven and/or hidden from public view.”
The plaintiff, Alison Miley, a communications professional based in Stowe, says she was interviewing for PR contract work in October 2016 at Inntopia when DeLuca brought her into an office, locked the door, and propositioned her for sex. DeLuca put his face near hers and “for approximately 20 minutes tried to convince her they should have a ‘friends with benefits’ sexual relationship.” Miley declined and tried to safely leave the office.
Miley accused DeLuca of continuing to solicit sex from her in phone calls, emails and texts. For the next several months, according to texts and emails provided by Miley to Inntopia, DeLuca continued to pursue Miley with invitations ranging from hiking to campaigning out of town for Hillary Clinton, to accompanying him to New York for a board meeting.
Miley’s attorney, Lisa Shelkrot of Langrock, Sperry & Wool, says that her refusal of the COO’s sexual advances were a factor in Inntopia’s decision not to hire her. The lawsuit also accuses DeLuca of false imprisonment.
Inntopia did not admit or deny the allegations in a filing with the court. The company’s offer came as a deadline for the defendants’ deposition loomed.
Miley said the judgment, payout and attorney’s fees are “an important victory.”
“I’m pleased to have prevailed in my lawsuit for sexual harassment, false imprisonment, and other violations of the Civil Rights Act against Inntopia and Craig DeLuca, and confirm the Defendants are being held accountable,” Miley said in a statement. “But there is still much work to be done. The payoff to enablers cannot be greater than the value in supporting victims.”
Alison Miley got a judgment from Inntopia. AVPR photo
Miley came forward in the fall of 2017, when she discovered there was another victim. At that point, it had been a year since she was harassed. While she said Inntopia officials questioned why she waited so long, for her it was literally a “me too” moment. Speaking up, she said, was “one of the most difficult experiences of my life.”
Although Inntopia was provided with email and texts that detailed DeLuca’s pursuit of Miley, Crist maintains that the company would have won at trial. In a statement, he said he made the decision to offer the judgment for financial reasons. The cost of the payout and legal fees versus a trial would be a wash, he said.
“From a strictly financial calculation, the amount we agreed to pay Ms. Miley is less than what it would have cost us to litigate the case,” Crist said. “Perhaps more importantly, we wanted to put the matter behind us for the sake of everyone involved, so we could focus on our business.”
Crist emphasized that Inntopia now has a “firm” commitment to the prevention of sexual harassment and “a workplace where we all treat one another with respect.”
The he said/she said nature of the back and forth in court filings has spilled over in statements to the press.
Miley questions whether the company has learned from the case.
“If he sincerely espouses such commitment to a safe workplace, he would not have trivialized this litigation as a mere ‘financial calculation’ and a matter ‘to put behind us,’” Miley said. “He might have, for starters, simply apologized.”
Attempts to reach DeLuca and his attorney were unsuccessful.
In DeLuca’s response to the complaint filed with the court in August 2017, the former COO claimed Miley, a divorced mother of two children, came on to him.
Texts that were submitted as evidence and provided to VTDigger show, however, that it was the other way around. Miley wrote to DeLuca in a text in November 2016: “I don’t know what gave you the green light to lock the door and proposition me.”
Craig DeLuca, former COO of Inntopia. Inntopia photo
In response, DeLuca says, “I appreciate your candor and I apologize for my incredibly bad behavior. … No matter what, I have no excuse for my boorish behavior.”
Miley is the second woman to receive compensation from Inntopia for sex discrimination. Lisa Senecal, who is also a marketing professional from Stowe, accused DeLuca of “aggressive” sexual misconduct and was awarded a six-figure settlement in 2017 in exchange for signing a non-disclosure agreement. Senecal later broke her silence when she says Inntopia breached the contract.
Senecal alerted Inntopia that DeLuca had been “physically and sexually aggressive” toward her in February 2017. The company started an investigation of the allegations in March that year, and did not put DeLuca on administrative leave as is often typical. He was fired in the summer of 2017 after Senecal made his dismissal a condition of her settlement with Inntopia.
Crist later told a client that the firing was the company’s decision, not a demand from Senecal, documents show.
Both women felt compelled to sue when Inntopia refused to apologize and take their claims seriously. Each said the company retrenched and came to DeLuca’s defense.
Senecal said the judgment in Miley’s lawsuit was “a rare accomplishment in sexual harassment litigation and an important step in holding employers and perpetrators accountable.” Senecal said she hoped Crist and DeLuca would “accept responsibility and finally apologize for the harm they have caused.”
Trevor Crist, CEO of Inntopia. Inntopia photo
Miley chose to take her case public, and in more than 10 months of negotiations with Inntopia, she refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement. She says she left six figures on the table because she wanted to speak freely about Inntopia’s and DeLuca’s misconduct and what she sees as Crist’s unwillingness to take the allegations seriously.
“The Defendants offered me significantly more money on multiple occasions in a private settlement in order to avoid a court order, and I declined that money and refused to sign any private agreement,” Miley wrote. “Their accountability is more important to me than money.”
Crist has denied that the company asked “for anything to be ‘private.'”
“Nor have we included any stipulation of confidentiality or an NDA in relation to the complaint brought against Inntopia by Ms. Miley,” he wrote in a statement.
Documents, however, show Crist offered Miley two options: a six-figure settlement with a private agreement or a judgment with significantly less money.
No formal apology will be forthcoming, according to Nicole Ravlin, of the PR firm People Making Good, which represents Inntopia. “[Crist] offered a time to sit down and speak with her,” Ravlin said. “Her response was the lawsuit. That certainly halted any conversation back and forth between the two of them. There’s no formal apology that’s going to be issued. Even now that it’s all settled.”
Crist said in a statement that he sent an email in which he said he was sorry he couldn’t attend a meeting with her when she originally came forward in October 2017. He thanked her for speaking up and wrote that he was “very disturbed/appalled/disgusted to hear what Jim and Pam relayed to me, and admire and respect your courage in sharing your horrible experience.” He added that he would “welcome the opportunity to speak” with her, but understood if she wasn’t interested.
Lisa Senecal settled with Inntopia in 2017. Courtesy Photo
That email arrived five days after Miley met with Inntopia HR. Meanwhile, Miley introduced herself to Senecal, knowing she was under an NDA and couldn’t share much. Miley says she realized there was some overlap in the timing of DeLuca harassing each them and that led her to believe Crist was not taking her claim seriously. His response to the allegations was slow, and she was concerned that she was not interviewed as part of an internal investigation. At that point, she spoke with Scott Labby, the attorney who represented Senecal in her settlement.
In a statement to VTDigger, Crist wrote that he “never doubted Ms. Miley’s account and from day one we have been trying to settle this in a reasonable manner for everyone’s sake.”
But Inntopia was not initially willing to negotiate. The company’s legal counsel ignored the letter from Miley’s attorney. In December 2017, Inntopia’s lawyers wrote that the company was not “interested in responding to your demand, and will not be engaging in further settlement negotiations.”
It wasn’t until five months later, when Miley filed a sex discrimination complaint, that Inntopia came to the table. The negotiations were testy and included a threat from Inntopia’s lawyers that they would release a “bombshell” court filing. In that August filing, DeLuca denied all of Miley’s allegations and made salacious claims about Miley’s sex life.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Woman gets $60,000 in second Inntopia sexual misconduct case.