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LOS ANGELES (CNS) - A woman has reached a settlement with a Culver City ad agency that she accused of wrongfully firing her in 2020 for expressing concerns about the honesty of a Princess Cruises assignment that she believed minimized the health threat from the coronavirus.
Lawyers for the company, Omelet LLC, filed court papers Monday with Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Barbara Scheper stating that their client's case with plaintiff Tiffany Harcrow was resolved.
No terms were divulged.
Harcrow filed her original suit in June 2020 and then an amended complaint in February 2021, paring her claims to wrongful termination and retaliation.
``This is a classic and especially egregious case of whistleblower retaliation, which took place as the world faced an unprecedented and deadly global health pandemic,'' the suit stated.
In their court papers, lawyers for Omelet wrote that the judge ruled early in the case that the marketing campaign at issue in Harcrow's lawsuit did not violate state law involving false advertising.
The 35-year-old Harcrow, hired in May 2018 as Omelet's associate creative director, received ``glowing evaluations'' for her work, her suit stated.
``Harcrow was consistently described by Omelet's management as an all- star and praised as one of Omelet's top creative professionals,'' according to the suit.
But in April 2020, Omelet demanded that Harcrow and her team develop a ``materially false, misleading, and dangerous marketing campaign for ... Princess Cruise Lines,'' a company client, the suit stated. Princess Cruises was not a defendant in Harcrow's case.
Omelet wanted an aggressive marketing campaign ``designed to mislead consumers'' into believing that it would be safe to travel on a Princess cruise ship on June 30, despite evidence to the contrary, according to the suit.
An Omelet briefing dated April 22, 2020, and shared with Harcrow spelled out Princess' own alleged objective of misleading customers into believing that its cruise lines were safe, the suit stated. However, by then Harcrow and other Omelet employees and managers knew that Congress and government agencies were investigating the alleged failure of cruise lines to protect the health of passengers and staff, the suit stated.
``Clearly, Omelet's misleading campaign violated its own professed core value'' to always tell the truth, the suit stated.
In March 2020, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control issued a no-sail order suspending the operations of cruise lines and other carriers for 30 days, and the next month the directive was renewed until July 24 of that year, the suit stated.
Harcrow objected to and complained about the Princess Cruises assignment to supervisors and asked whether safety protocols were in place, the suit states. She also stated that telling the public that it was permitted, let alone safe, to travel on a cruise line on June 30, 2020, violated the CDC's orders, according to the suit.
``As a result, Harcrow told her supervisors that she reasonably believed that the campaign was misleading, fraudulent, unethical ... and would endanger the health, safety, and lives of consumers,'' the suit stated.
In response, Harcrow's supervisor allegedly said, ``I would not put my family on a cruise ship either, for fear of catching COVID-19, but it was our duty to our client to instruct the public to do so.''
In a subsequent email, Harcrow and another Omelet employee stated to management, ``From the health and safety precautions provided by Princess, we don't feel comfortable telling the public that it's safe to get on a cruise ship on June 30 (2020),'' the suit states.
Harcrow and her colleague then refused the Princess Cruises assignment, the suit stated.
The next day, Harcrow was derided by two Omelet managers for objecting to the Princess Cruises campaign and one of them said, ``If you refuse this Princess brief, you will not be resourced on any more projects at Omelet,'' the suit stated.
Harcrow, who was not assigned any other active projects and never given an explanation, was fired May 6, 2020, the suit stated. The company never investigated Harcrow's retaliation claims as required by Omelet's own policies, according to the suit.