Brad Brown, a former promotions producer at Cleveland ABC affiliate WEWS, is suing the station’s parent company for keeping a hidden camera in the men’s bathroom over the summer.
Cleveland.com reports that Brown filed the lawsuit against E.W. Scripps Co. Inc., and is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, plus attorneys’ fees.
The lawsuit blames Berry Pinney, then the station’s director of engineering and operations, for placing the hidden cameras in the men’s bathroom. According to the suit, Pinney told an employee to place a camera in a non-functioning sprinkler in the ceiling of the first-floor men’s room with the goal of catching a vandal. The suit claims that on July 13, an employee noticed video images from the men’s restroom on a security-desk monitor. Once employees learned of the camera, the recordings were promptly deleted, the suit claims.
“They spied on their own employees while we were using the toilet,” Brown said in a statement. “It is hard to imagine anything more outrageous.”
Brown has since left WEWS and now works at Tribune owned FOX affiliate WJW.