Male Employees Sue Hooters for Sexual Harassment

The lawsuit is a laundry list of simulated sex, offensive names, and bad touching
By Michael Harthorne,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 5, 2016 2:26 PM CST
Male Employees Sue Hooters for Sexual Harassment
A Hooters location in Las Vegas.   (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong,File)

It might not be shocking to read that two Hooters employees are suing the company for sexual harassment. But what if we told you the two employees were men? A lawyer for PJ Cagnina and Scott Peterson tells CBS Los Angeles his clients were subjected to years of "repeated, intense acts which were intended to cause mental harm…to humiliate them" at the hands of their former boss while they worked as managers at various Hooters locations in the LA area. The lawsuit claims their boss, Rick Leukert, would inappropriately touch Peterson and talk about him in a sexually demeaning way, NBC Los Angeles reports. It also states he sent Peterson photos of a female employee he claimed to have slept with and would touch Peterson's butt while standing behind him.

But according to the lawsuit, Cagnina got the worst of it. It claims Leukert threw him to the ground following a bikini contest and pretended to have sex with him while people watched. It also states Leukert would try to get him to "go skinny dipping with female employees" and ask if he'd impregnated any of them. The lawsuit claims Leukert took a cellphone belonging to Cagnina's girlfriend—a Hooters' manager—and looked at her "intimate photos." It states he had his assistant write "PGay" on a trophy being given to Cagnina and would pronounce his name "Cagina" to rhyme with "vagina." The lawsuit claims Cagnina and Peterson were retaliated against after complaining about Leukert's behavior, with Peterson losing his job. The lawsuit filed Tuesday seeks unspecified damages. (More Hooters stories.)

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