In a federal lawsuit, a former social-media strategist at the New York City advertising agency Merkley+Partners has accused a former creative director of raping her while she was heavily intoxicated and unconscious inside a bathroom stall at the firm’s office.
Lawyers for the plaintiff, who was identified only as S. O’Rear in the lawsuit, said in the court documents that Armando Diaz, then a creative director at the agency, took advantage of her and sexually assaulted her at the office following the company’s holiday party in December 2022.
The 20-page complaint filed this week in Manhattan federal court calls Diaz “an open and notorious sexual harasser” and accuses the ad firm of being “stuck in the Mad Men era” by “propagating a workplace typified by heavy drinking and predation of young female employees by senior male management.”
Business Insider reached out to Diaz for comment via a LinkedIn message and by email, but he did not immediately respond.
The lawsuit also accuses the company of allowing Diaz to continue working in the office, even after its internal investigation ended, and allowing him to resign on his own terms.
In addition to Diaz, the lawsuit names Merkley+Partners and its parent company Omnicom Group as defendants. Omnicom is one of the world’s biggest ad-holding companies, with a market cap of about $18 billion and $14.7 billion in revenue in 2023.
Merkley+Partners is a 30-year-old full-service ad firm that has created campaigns for brands including Mercedes-Benz, White Castle, and Florida’s Natural.
The agency presents itself as a place that supports employees in a very personal way.
“We share advice, chargers and even apartments with each other,” its website reads. “We know every company preaches about how they are like a family, but we’ve actually created them (21 marriages & counting).”
A Merkley+Partners spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit.
“We do not comment on any ongoing litigation,” the spokesperson said. “However, we can confirm the individual defendant is no longer employed by Merkley.”
Omnicom Group did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Allegations of sexual-harassment have plagued the ad industry in recent years. In one high-profile lawsuit, Erin Johnson, a former global chief communications officer at the WPP-owned J. Walter Thompson (now known as VML), sued the company’s then-CEO alleging sexual harassment. He denied the allegations, and the case was settled in 2018.
Industry groups have also launched campaigns to combat sexual harassment in the workplace and raise awareness about how nondisclosure agreements are commonly used to muzzle victims.
O’Rear’s lawsuit against Merkley+Partners says Diaz is a married man with four children and alleges that he was “serial sexual predator whom young female employees are warned about early in their tenure” at the ad agency.
“Mr. Diaz is known for making outrageous sexual comments about female employees in group meetings, being overtly ‘flirtatious,’ and went so far as to flash his naked body on a video call with another female employee,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit states that at the company’s holiday party at a Manhattan bar on December 15, 2022, Diaz said, “I love a woman in a beret” before he told the plaintiff, “If you were wearing a beret, I would fuck you right now.”
“Diaz was sexually aggressive to junior female colleagues that evening to the point of groping one of O’Rear’s colleagues,” the lawsuit says.
The plaintiff says she was plied with alcohol before she was raped
The lawsuit alleges that during the night, Diaz plied the plaintiff with “copious” alcohol and she became intoxicated to the point of blacking out. The lawsuit says that when she said she needed to head home via the train, Diaz “feigned chivalry,” offered to walk her, and instead took her back to the firm’s lower Manhattan office and raped her there.
The lawsuit alleges that the woman was “fully blacked out” and that when she regained consciousness in a stall in the women’s office bathroom, Diaz had his penis out of his pants. Her first thought was, “How did I get here? I don’t want to do this,” the lawsuit says.
“Ms. O’Rear declined to engage in oral sex when she came to, then slipped back into unconsciousness and woke up the next morning with no recollection of how she got home,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit alleges that O’Rear learned she was raped only months later, during a Cinco de Mayo office happy hour, when she asked Diaz about that night and he told her, “We did everything.”
“You went down on me, I went down on you, we had sex,” the lawsuit says Diaz told the plaintiff. Per the lawsuit, she “was stunned, and said: ‘What about the cameras?'”
Diaz replied, “There are no cameras by that bathroom,” the lawsuit says.
The plaintiff then told a colleague, “I just have to say this to someone because I’m freaking out but Armando took advantage of me after the holiday happy hour,” according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit says the company allowed Diaz to resign with a ‘golden parachute’
The lawsuit says that the plaintiff ultimately reported sexual assault to the company and that “instead of firing Mr. Diaz, they let him continue working in the same office where he sexually assaulted O’Rear for over a month after the company’s investigation.”
“When Ms. O’Rear reported her sexual assault internally, Merkley+Partners concluded that Mr. Diaz had, in fact, sexually assaulted Ms. O’Rear,” the plaintiff’s lawyer wrote.
The ad agency, the lawsuit alleges, “allowed Mr. Diaz to resign on his own terms, going so far as to make a golden parachute payment to him on his way out the door.”
The lawsuit accuses Merkley+Partners of victim-blaming and “telling Ms. O’Rear that their ability to investigate her claim was compromised by her consumption of alcohol … provided by her rapist!”
The lawsuit also says O’Rear was “treated in a cruel and callous fashion” during the firm’s investigation.
“This an egregious case of sexual assault and sexual harassment that must be swiftly remedied,” says the complaint, which seeks a jury trial to determine damages.
O’Rear’s attorney told BI she was no longer working at the ad agency but declined to comment further.
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