#Moog Facing Lawsuits Over Discrimination, Contract Breaches
“#Moog Facing Lawsuits Over Discrimination, Contract Breaches”
Filing a complaint with the Wake County Superior Court in Raleigh, North Carolina, UG Strategies claimed that Moog had wrongfully terminated a licensing agreement for UGS to manage Moogfest in 2018. The company had previously handled PR duties for earlier iterations of Moogfest. Moog and UGS arranged an agreement that was finalized in March, just two months before the festival happened in mid-May; it was supposed to extend through 2020, renewing automatically in three-year terms unless otherwise breached, UGS alleges. But according to the suit, Moog terminated the agreement on August 31, 2018.
The complaint alleges that Moog agreed to pay UGS a substantial fee for its 2018 services, but paid less than half of what was due. Through the lawsuit, UGS is seeking damages in excess of $25,000, plus attorneys’ fees.
When reached by Pitchfork, the attorney for Michael J. Adams, the president and CEO Moog Music, shared the following statement: “It is a baseless lawsuit filed on the eve of the statute of limitations by a company who terminated the contract.”
Prior to the UG Strategies lawsuit, another production company attempted similar legal action against Moog. For the 2019 festival, Moog had tapped a production company called Q Level to manage the festival. That October, Q Level filed a complaint alleging that Moog had “revoked Q Level’s rights” to produce subsequent festivals, as outlined in a memorandum of understanding that served as a precursor to a formalized licensing agreement.
Last September, Moog filed a counterclaim that issued denials to Q Level’s breach of contract allegations. Moog’s defense alleged, “The parties never had any agreement or expectation for [Moog] to compensate [Q Level], rather… the parties contemplated [Q Level] would retain 100% of the profits and 100% of the losses from 2019 Moogfest.” The company accused Q Level of withholding social media passwords and damaging the Moog brand with those out-of-date channels, to the tune of “at least $75,000.” Moog dropped its counterclaim on October 20.
After reaching an impasse with a mediator on February 17, 2021, the parties agreed to dismiss all remaining claims on April 5.
In addition to the new Moogfest lawsuit, Moog Music Inc. is also facing a federal gender discrimination suit, filed by former sales staff employee Hannah Green on March 16, 2021 and amended on May 25. She’s seeking more than $1.1 million in damages and legal fees, her lawyer told the Asheville Blade in June.
In the complaint, Green outlines the months of harassment and undercutting she allegedly faced as she worked her way up from a sales assistant to a high-performing member of the sales team. She says that in a period when she was the only woman on the sales team, her male colleagues continuously subjected her to verbal harassment, and that one in particular physically intimidated her on multiple occasions.
Green claims that she was fired on April 23, 2020 as a result of her repeated objections to the ongoing harassment she faced. She alleges that she was ousted after after being refused consideration for a promotion that went to a male colleague, “without posting the open position and without an application process, in contravention of written company policy.” She also claims that the company denied her two months of promised severance pay. “Moog’s decision to terminate plaintiff’s employment was made on the basis of her gender. In the alternative, the Defendant fired Green in retaliation for asserting her constitutional right to be free from non-discrimination in the workplace,” the claim alleges.
Green further detailed the harassment and abuse she said she faced at Moog to the Asheville Blade. “One of my last weeks there the guy that assaulted me and carried a knife, made a joke about killing a woman in a sales team meeting,” she told the outlet.
Moog denied Green’s Blade claims in a statement to DJ Mag. The company said that it had conducted its own internal investigation and found Green’s claims to be “unsubstantiated.”
Moogfest works with the synthesizer company Moog Music and the Moog Institute, Moog’s arm for nonprofit activities. Prior to UG Strategies’ involvement, Moogfest was administered through a company called Triangle Partners, which was set up and run by Michael J. Adams and brand manager Emmy Parker.
Moogfest lost $1.5 million on its April 2014 iteration in Asheville; barely a month later, Buncombe County’s Culture and Recreation Authority declined its request for $250,000 of funding, which motivated the festival’s move to Durham, North Carolina in 2016. Moogfest had received $180,000 in cash and “in-kind services” from the city of Asheville and larger Buncombe County in 2014. Beginning in 2016, Moogfest received $125,000 in total funding from Durham city and county governments after pledging to stay in the city for five years—an arrangement that was maintained annually through 2019.
The company has used Moogfest as a platform for progressive branding in recent years. As North Carolina was grappling with the fallout from HB2, the 2016 anti-trans “bathroom bill,” Moogfest launched a “protest stage” for 2017 that featured performances by Mykki Blanco, Talib Kweli, and a local punk trio. Later that year, the festival announced a slate of female, trans, and nonbinary performers as its first wave of programming for 2018. The move prompted Caroline Polachek to remove herself from the lineup, noting that she was “furious” that the festival had been “exploitative and unprofessional” by not telling artists about those plans.
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