Ex-Playmate Settles Suit Over Firing by Pest Control Firm

A former Playboy playmate who said she was fired from her job as an office manager after she showed her 20-year-old centerfold to a supervisor at his request has settled a lawsuit with the company for an undisclosed amount, her attorney said.

Oxnard resident Patricia Tehaney, Miss May 1976, said that she was unfairly discriminated against when she was fired in December 1996 from her job at Hydrex Pest Control. Tehaney settled the suit against the Santa Barbara company Wednesday, attorney Greg Ramirez said.

The terms of the settlement were not released because of a confidentiality agreement, he said.

Tehaney, who grew up in El Monte, is now working for the Playboy company and “is very happy,” Ramirez said.

She charged in the suit that when Hydrex hired her, she informed her new boss that photographs of her had appeared in Playboy. She also told the boss that a new book featuring five decades of Playboy centerfolds was about to be published and that she would be among those featured in the publication.

Her boss told her not to talk about her centerfold to anyone because the company had strict rules against sexual harassment and did not want any trouble, she said. But another supervisor asked to see the centerfold and when it was discovered that she showed it to him, she was fired, Tehaney said.

Representatives for Hydrex said her dismissal had nothing to do with the centerfold.