The optics are pretty lousy when a company run by a 73-year-old man cans a nearly 20-year employee as she hits 73 and then attempts to call it a retirement on paper.
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Yet, according to former longtime Disney business analyst Deborah Violante, that is exactly what happened to her at the Bob Iger-led Mouse House last year. After apparently repeated efforts to get an explanation from her managers and Disney HR, and even getting offered a job back at the company similar to the position she held from 2005-23, Violante is taking Disney to court in a 20-claim wrongful termination, discrimination and retaliation lawsuit ( read it here ).
As you would expect from a business analyst, Violante has receipts.
“Violante was approximately 55 years old when she first became employed by Disney,” reads the July 23 filing in Los Angeles Superior Court. Violante had been doing contractor work for Disney since 2002 when she was brought into the Magic Kingdom full time. “Thereafter, she remained employed by Disney for 18 years.”
The jury trial-seeking complaint seeks a variety of damages and injunctive relief.
“As Violante got older, she became subjected to a campaign of discrimination and harassment based on her age,” the 34-page document from employment law specialists Yadegar, Minoofar & Soleymani LLP goes on to claim. “Then, after Violante became injured and needed to take time off, Disney expedited its plans to terminate her and used the pretext of a mass layoff to terminate Violante from the company based on her age and disability. When Violante was 73 years old, Disney boldly – and illegally – unilaterally ‘retired’ Violante from the company even though she had never asked to retire and never authorized anyone to retire her.”
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Specially, having been a much-rewarded employee expecting “voluntary retirement” at some point down the line, Violante details in her legal action how things started to spoil after she was one of the last members of her department brought back from the company’s pandemic furlough in 2020. Besides being denied overtime, even as she put in lots of extra time to catch up on the backlog from the furlough, Violante says she was blunted and delayed over and over in her need to use some of her vacation time to get much-needed knee surgery.
After Violante lost that banked vacation time because of “the refusal to grant Violante any time off,” the whole thing blew up. Her colleague Robert Jeff Downs, who would be addled with most of the plaintiff’s duties if she was to be out of the Burbank offices, lashed out in the late spring of 2023 with, “When are you going to retire?”
“This comment was clearly age-related and also evidenced an animus towards Violante’s medical needs and limitations,” the filing says of Downs and the then-100-year-old company. “Disney’s mistreatment of, and animus towards, Violante was so brazen as to be observed by other Cast Members, causing one of them to confide in Violante that it appears Disney wants her to quit or retire.”
Things looked to go from bad to worse at the parent company of the Happiest Place on Earth when Violante suddenly was pink-slipped on May 22, 2023. The firing was a part of the recently reinstated multi-phased cuts of 7,000 staffers as a part of Iger’s overall $5.5 billion in cost savings plan to pump up Disney stock.
Learning she was the only member of her department to be let go, Violante pushed back in the few weeks she had left on the job. Disney seemed to ignore her and actually was treating her exit as a retirement — until the words “age discrimination” joined the conversation. Now Disney pushed back Violante’s exit date and acknowledged in static bureaucratic jargon in September 2023 that it “was an involuntary separation due to a reduction in force.” Around the same time, the increasingly fragile Violante’s “physicians placed her on a disability leave until October 8, 2023.”
However, like the most recent phase of the MCU, Violante’s filing reads like she and Disney existed in two separate and very different timelines:
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“Disney’s conclusions about the reasons for her termination were strange for several reasons. First, despite Violante informing Disney that she had ‘suffered numerous hurtful comments and innuendo regarding age, questioning when I am going to retire,’ no one at Disney ever asked her about the comments or the identity of the person who had made them. So, how could Disney truly reach the conclusion that the reason for termination was not discriminatory?
“Second, despite her repeated requests, Disney still failed to offer to Violante the alleged non-discriminatory reason for her layoff.”
The filing adds:
“On October 19, 2023, because Disney had not offered any solutions to provide a workplace free of discrimination and harassment, and, especially since Disney seemingly did no investigate and covered up its findings regarding Violante’s allegations of discrimination, Violante declined Disney’s offer to accept a new position.
“Then, on October 31, 2023, Violante requested again that Disney provide an explanation for her termination or otherwise address her concerns of discrimination and retaliation. Disney failed to provide any explanation.
“To this day, it remains unclear what metrics Disney used to evaluate her performance, especially given that, prior to this, no one had notified Violante of any performance deficiencies.”
After all that, more salt was rubbed in the wound.
“On November 13, 2023, Violante received an email from Disney congratulating her on her ‘retirement,’” the complaint almost comically notes.
Disney did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment Tuesday on Violante’s lawsuit. If the company does respond, this post will be updated.
Speaking of retirement, Iger looks to be hanging on at Disney until he is at least 75.
Originally only back as CEO in late 2022 for just two years, Iger’s contract was given another two years by the board in July 2023. Right now, having survived an activist investor battle or two and with no clear successor in place yet, Iger is set to stay at Disney until the end of 2026 — around the time this lawsuit will be still in the courts unless the parties settle beforehand.
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