Legal woes for Megan Thee Stallion as former cameraman Emilio Garcia files a lawsuit for harassment and claims of being forced to observe sexual activity, amidst accusations of labor code breaches.
One of the most popular singer-rappers of today’s times, Megan Thee Stallion is caught in the middle of a legal battle. The case is brought forth by one of her ex-employees, who worked as a photographer and cameraman for her since July 2018. A lawsuit has been filed at the Los Angeles County Superior Court by Emilio Garcia against Megan Pete (the singer-rapper’s actual name), Megan Thee Stallion Entertainment, Inc., Hot Girl Touring, LLC, and Roc Nation.
Emilio Garcia has allegedly claimed in his lawsuit that he was unfairly treated and subjected to harassment in a hostile and abusive work environment. Not just that he even claims that he was forced to see Meghan Thee Stallion have sex right beside him in a moving car. The defendant also claims that quite a few labour codes were violated during his tenure and he wasn’t even properly compensated monetarily.
Emilio Garcia claims that he was misclassified as an independent contractor when he was hired in 2018, which denied him from getting health care and overtime payment, as per California law. He also alleges that Roc Nation in August 2022 changed his pay structure. He was moved to a pay-per-task system however the time expectations and demands were pretty much the same as before. This just decreased his pay significantly whereas the work remained almost the same. Not only that, he was also asked for exclusivity and not work with any other clients by Megan Thee Stallion.
Emilio Garcia mentioned another incident, which sounds quite disturbing on the outset. It’s from the time they were all out in Ibiza, Spain back in June 2022. He claims that while he and three other women were travelling in an SUV together, Megan Thee Stallion and one of the women started making out and having sex right beside him. He says that it was a foreign country and they were in the middle of nowhere which is why he couldn’t just get off the car. Thus, he had to be seated through the entire ordeal out of compulsion. In his claims, Emilio Garcia says that he was feeling embarrassed, mortified and offended as well but the car was moving and he didn’t want to be left alone outside in an unknown country in an unknown place.
Talking to NBC News, Emilio Garcia claimed, “I felt uncomfortable. I was kind of frozen, and I was shocked. At kind of just be the overall audacity to do this right, right beside me.” There has been no clarity yet on the part whether Megan Thee Stallion knew or not that Emilio Garcia was in the car with them at that time.
This wasn’t all. Emilio Garcia also claims that he was fat shamed by Meghan Thee Stallion. He says that he was referred to as a ‘fat bitch’ quite a few times. Not only that, he was even told to ‘spit [his] food out’ as ‘you don’t need to be eating’.
Megan Thee Stallion’s attorney Alex Spiro however has refuted to all the claims made by Emilio Garcia. “This is an employment claim for money — with no sexual harassment claim filed and with salacious accusations to attempt to embarrass her. We will deal with this in court,” said Alex Spiro as reported by Hindustan Times.
Emilio Garcia is no longer working with Megan Thee Stallion as his employment with Roc Nation was terminated in June 2023. He believes that the cause for this termination is his retaliation and voicing out the complaints related to the wage and labour law violations.
“Megan just needs to pay our client what he’s due, own up to her behavior, and quit this sort of sexual harassment and fat-shaming conduct. Emilio should never have been put in a position of having to be in the vehicle with her while she had sex with another woman. ‘Inappropriate’ is putting it lightly. Exposing this behavior to employees is definitely illegal,” concludes Ron Zambrano, Emilio Garcia’s attorney, as per a report on HT.
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