Sexual Harassment Suits Filed Against Irvine Brokerage

Two women in separate lawsuits have accused an Orange County securities firm and its operators of pervasive sexual harassment, citing a stream of incidents that included groping, kissing and attempts at sexual relations.

The women contend that Foresight Capital Management Inc. in Irvine and its president, Robert Lechman, fostered a hostile environment for the few female workers there. One suit also names as defendants brokers Rene Molina, Greg Escalante and Nader Mokri.

The lawsuits, filed in Orange County Superior Court six days apart last month, seek unspecified damages.

In one suit, Gail King Collins of Mission Viejo alleges that she was subjected to “constant crude behavior, including a constant exchange of perverse jokes,” as well as the “incessant use of profanity . . . and screaming” and unwelcome sexual advances.

In the other suit, Nancy Hartman White of South Laguna accused the defendants of creating “an intimidating, hostile and offensive work environment” and failing to take “appropriate corrective action” when she complained about the incidents.

Lechman and the brokers deny that they did anything wrong and assert that the alleged incidents are fabricated.

The lawsuits, part of a continuing rise in the number of such complaints statewide, are unusual for the amount of detail alleged. White alone lists nearly four dozen alleged instances of harassment and failures to correct the situation.

“Usually, you don’t see more than a dozen incidents alleged,” San Francisco labor lawyer Gary R. Siniscalco said. He said that occurs only when plaintiffs want to show a pattern of improper conduct that created a hostile environment.

Lechman decried what seemed to him to be the ease with which the women were able to file lawsuits. “It’s like people walk around with bull’s-eyes on their backs,” he said.

“I can’t imagine how they can win in court,” said Escalante, an Orange County Museum of Art trustee. “The whole thing’s incredibly phony.”

Molina, who is a member of the Laguna Niguel Investment and Banking Committee formed in the wake of Orange County’s bankruptcy to help guide the city’s investment activities, said he has “a lot of feelings on this” but feared saying anything else outside the presence of his lawyer.

Both Molina and Escalante recently quit Foresight.

Mokri, asserting that the charges are “bogus,” said: “The truth will come out.”

Both White and Collins said in the lawsuits that they were subjected to a variety of gross and obscene acts that grew in intensity and in number over the years they worked at Foresight.

“The same three or four people created the locker-room environment, and the overall atmosphere allowed this behavior to go on,” said White, a former aspiring actress who once wrote, produced and starred in a play about a previous encounter she had with sexual harassment.

Foresight Capital is a tiny brokerage, employing five or six people, but it relies on a group of independent brokers to bring in business. Up to a dozen brokers operate out of Foresight offices to handle securities trades for numerous cities, universities and other public entities.

The company, incorporated in 1984, had no female employees or brokers when Collins started working there in May 1991, her suit contends.

Collins was dismissed in January 1996 because, her suit alleges, she complained about sexual harassment and “discovered” the use of “illegal tax evasion tactics.” Defendants said she simply complained too much about too many things.

White started working in January 1993, to be trained as a broker, and quit last November after her repeated written and verbal requests to halt the abusive conduct were disregarded, her suit contends.

Both women stayed so long because they needed a job and weren’t sure they could get one elsewhere during the region’s long recession. Besides, White said, she was urged to stay with promises of big money to be earned.

Escalante charged that White’s suit was filed simply “to get money.”

Indeed, even Collins’ action paints an unflattering picture of White, saying that White flirted in her interview to get the job, was typically dressed in “lounge-wear” and received preferential treatment by getting paid for hours she didn’t work.

White admits that she flirted in the office.

“Yes, I was [a flirt], and I did get preferential treatment. I was a good sport,” White said.

She said she did it only to get along. She said she needed the paycheck and was promised that she would earn “obscene” amounts of money as a broker. But instead she ended up taking Collins’ job last year as Lechman’s executive assistant.

“I was trying to be taken seriously,” White said, “but I began to worry that I was there for some other reason.”