GARY HEATHCOTT Arkansas Business

CJRW, the Little Rock ad and PR firm, responded in detail today with a counterclaim to Gary Heathcott’s lawsuit seeking damages because his consulting contract was severed.

Heathcott, who now lives in San Antonio, sold his firm to CJRW in 2014 and continued in a consulting role in a five-year deal worth more than $1 million. He contends CJRW severed the deal to save money after he’d been instrumental in landing major state accounts. CJRW indicated the decision was for unprofessional behavior that violated the company’s policy manual.

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CJRW has now gotten specific about several dozen of Heathcott’s alleged “bullying, harassment and sexually inappropriate comments” in an answer and counter-claim filed today. You can read it all here.

The alleged comments range from remarks about tight jeans to an invitation to a strip club to use of a racial epithet to interference in account management that caused problems with clients. He was quoted more than once as remarking about female employees, “I wish I had a swing like that in my backyard” and was accused of mimicking oral sex while licking on a window in front of another female employee.

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The counterclaim says CJRW is due damages from Heathcott for his breach of contract terms and damage to its reputation by his comments.

UPDATE: Heathcott responds:

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Their response is filled with half truths, distortions, and outright fabrications. If only a small portion of those claims were factual, why would Darin Gray continue to throw bigger and better contracts to me, including a commission addendum just months before kicking me to the curb? Even so, none of what they claim gave them the right to cancel my contract, as that was a right reserved exclusively for me, as executed by Darin Gray.”

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