Following a flurry of harassment allegations made by women against male colleagues at ABC, Nickelodeon, and Amazon, a location assistant and office manager on CBS’s Hawaii Five-0 has filed a lawsuit against CBS and a production and payroll company for failing to stop workplace and sexual harassment on the show’s set.
In the complaint, filed in a Hawaii state court on Monday and handed over to a federal court on Tuesday, plaintiff Kelly Tolar claims that location scout Jake Downer—the son of Hawaii Five-0 producer Jeffrey Downer—”acted aggressively, unprofessionally, offensively, abusively, and/or in a threatening manner to Tolar” at various times when they worked together between 2014 and 2015. In the complaint Tolar alleges that at various moments Downer called her a “stupid fucking idiot,” spit on her, pulled her hair, threatened to light her desk on fire, put thumb tacks on her chair, and repeatedly encouraged her to commit suicide.
In the complaint, Tolar claims that, in 2015, she sent both a memo and follow-up text message to her managers detailing Downer’s inappropriate behavior, but neither resulted in a formal reprimand. Tolar alleges that her bosses downplayed her concerns; in one instance a manager suggested she hold off on writing a memo to human resources until management could speak to Tolar’s father, the show’s producer. In December of 2015, Tolar submitted a complaint to the Honolulu Police Department about Downer’s behavior.
Tolar also claims that, after she had an intimate relationship with a separate employee, a manager, in a different department at Eye Productions, the production company responsible for Hawaii Five-0, he told other managers about their relationship, continued to text her, and circulated nude photos of her around the office, in breach of CBS’s company policy. You can read the full complaint at The Hollywood Reporter.
Tolar is suing on nine counts of relief including sexual harassment, negligence, and workplace harassment. Downer is currently a location scout on the Fox series The Orville.
