On Monday, the judge overseeing the Erin Johnson discrimination case ordered the plaintiff to provide copies of a tape that allegedly show former chairman and CEO Gustavo Martinez making a rape joke at a J. Walter Thomson meeting in 2015.
The video tape is at the center of the lawsuit filed by Johnson, claiming that Martinez made constant stream of sexist and racist remarks that made it impossible for her to do her job, reports US Campaign. The lawyers of Johnson asked the court to allow the tape to be used as evidence early last week.
However, WPP rejects the idea of bringing the tape and using it as evidence, arguing that it contained propriety evidence of JWT's process and that Johnson had withheld it from the company. Johnson's lawyer, however, insisted that the videotape, which runs less than a minute long, does not contain any propriety information.
District Judge J. Paul Oetke ordered the attorneys of Johnson to present the tape to the court so that he could view it. They are also asked to bring a copy to the defendants, who will then have a week to file any objections if they wanted not to use the tape as evidence.
According to Agency Spy, WPP claimed that Johnson hid the offending portion of the video even though her lawyers stated that she allowed the chief talent officer and Gustavo Martinez to know that she was going to delete it so every other JWT could avoid watching Martinez throwing some rape jokes.
Ad Age reported that the case of Johnson mentions other alleged events and says other executives were there to witness the offensive comments made by Martinez. The agency then hired an external law firm to conduct an investigation after JWT initially said internal revenues did not find any substantiation for Johnson's claims.
Martinez resigned by mutual agreement on Thursday and was succeeded by WPP executive Tamara Ingram.
