On December 5, 2019, Moogfest announced that its 2020 festival would not go on for “logistical reasons,” well before COVID-19 obliterated the live-music circuit. Now, Moog Music is being sued over alleged contract breaches that relate to the cancellation. The civil suit was filed on August 11 by UG Strategies (UGS), the marketing and event production firm that organized Moogfest 2018. The new litigation follows a recent federal discrimination complaint filed by a former sales employee earlier this year.

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 The company accused Q Level of withholding social media passwords and damaging the Moog brand with those out-of-date channels, to the tune of “at least $75,000.”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.

https://pitchfork.com/news/moog-facing-lawsuits-over-discrimination-contract-breaches