Don Klosterman Sued for Sexual Harassment
Don Klosterman, former Rams’ general manager, has been hit with a multimillion-dollar sexual harassment lawsuit stemming from his one-year stint as president of the firm that managed Hollywood Park’s card casino.
Hollywood Park is also named in the suit, filed Feb. 6 in Los Angeles Superior Court by Miki Gaut, a former employee of the firm, Pacific Casino Management.
Gaut accuses Klosterman of coercing her to have sex with him in February, 1995, at his apartment in a luxury high-rise in Century City.
She says she was subjected to several other incidents of sexual harassment and racial discrimination by other Pacific Casino Management employees before eventually being fired last September on trumped-up charges. At the time of her firing, Gaut was the only black employee in her department at the card club, according to her complaint. She is seeking at least $1 million in damages on each of seven counts.
Klosterman’s attorney, Richard Crane, said Wednesday that his client “unequivocally denies each and every allegation.”
Besides Klosterman and Hollywood Park, defendants include Pacific Casino Management; Rick Cole, vice president of casino operations at Pacific; Beth Ayjian, a casino manager at Pacific, and Paul Jackson, director of human resources at Hollywood Park.
Klosterman, who was a star college quarterback and longtime general manager of the Rams, was a partner in Pacific Casino Management with Eddie LeBaron, a lawyer and former quarterback for the Washington Redskins. LeBaron is not named in the lawsuit.
Klosterman held the $40,000-a-month post at Pacific Casino Management from the time the card club opened in July, 1994, until last November, when Hollywood Park bought out Pacific’s contract and took over management of the facility. Until a state law was changed last fall, Hollywood Park had been barred from running a card club on its own.
Gaut says in her complaint that, around September 1994, Klosterman began making “routine stops” at her work station in the marketing department, often asking her to do personal favors and regularly complimenting her on her appearance.
On Feb. 7, 1995, Klosterman approached Gaut and said, “Let’s go have some fun,” according to her complaint. Overriding her objections that she could not leave work, Klosterman pulled Gaut by the arm out of the club and had her drive him, in his car, to his Century Towers apartment, the complaint says.
Klosterman then forced himself on her, called her a cab and gave her $20 for the fare, the complaint states. Gaut also discovered three $100 bills in her purse when she got home, she says.
The Klosterman-LeBaron regime at the card club is one aspect of Hollywood Park’s recent history being scrutinized by dissident shareholder Marjorie L. Everett, once head of Hollywood Park.
According to court filings, Everett, who was ousted in 1991 by a shareholder group led by current chairman R.D. Hubbard, is investigating whether Hubbard and other directors and officers “engaged in self-dealing, mismanagement and waste of corporate assets.”
Hollywood Park has not disclosed the terms of its buyout of the Pacific Casino Management contract, but is expected to do so in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission by the end of March.