Martin Agency and ex-exec settle #MeToo-era lawsuit out of court
The Martin Agency and its former chief creative officer settled a long-running lawsuit stemming from his ouster in 2017 amid allegations of sexual harassment.
Joe Alexander had accused the company of destroying his reputation in a 2024 lawsuit filed in Richmond Circuit Court seeking $50 million in damages – his second legal filing against the company, which rebranded earlier this year to MARTIN*.
In a court filing last week, attorneys for Alexander and the Martin Agency asked a judge to dismiss the case, writing that “all matters of controversy between them have been resolved to their satisfaction.”
The filing included no additional information about the resolution and neither lawyers for Martin nor Alexander responded to a request for comment. An email to Alexander last week was unanswered.
Alexander worked at the Richmond-based ad agency in senior roles for 26 years, leading work on accounts for prominent brands like Geico, Walmart and Benjamin Moore paint. When his departure was first announced, AdWeek described him as an “elder statesman in the ad industry.”
A week later, the publication reported “he left the company after several sexual harassment claims about him were made with the agency.” The Wall Street Journal followed up the next month with an article detailing a 2013 confidential settlement in which Alexander was accused by a female copywriter of making unwanted advances, touching her inappropriately and trying to kiss her. The copywriter also alleged he invited her to his hotel room during a commercial shoot for Walmart and got naked after she arrived.
The Journal reported the woman received $275,000 as part of the agreement, which also barred her from further employment with Martin and its parent company.
Alexander has consistently denied the harassment claims and, of the behavior described in the settlement, he told the Journal at the time that the event was “a consensual incident I am not proud of.”
Since his departure from Martin, he filed two lawsuits against the agency alleging reputational damage.
The first, filed in 2019, alleged Martin defamed him by reposting news articles about the agency’s new CEO, Kristen Cavallo, which referenced and recapped the allegations against him. That case was dismissed and a subsequent appeal by Alexander was unsuccessful, with the court ruling that nothing in the articles spoke to the validity of the sexual harassment allegations, only that they existed.
In Alexander’s second lawsuit, filed in 2024, he alleged Martin Agency executives defamed him in statements made to news outlets, which the agency also subsequently posted on its website.
The first involved a profile of Cavallo in Ad Age in which she was named ad executive of the year, where she references being appointed after a “MeToo scandal” and pulling the pieces together after a “crisis.”
The second concerned a 2023 article in Virginia Business naming Cavallo business person of the year. In it, Elizabeth Paul, the agency’s chief strategy officer, attributed a portion of the agency’s business woes in 2017 to a crisis caused by a person she refers to as “He Who Shall Not Be Named.”
Richmond Circuit Court Judge Jacqueline McClenney dismissed both claims in 2024, ruling the statements in question weren’t capable of defamatory meaning.
Michael Phillips
But in a ruling earlier this year, she said a third claim could go forward alleging Martin broke the terms of the 2013 confidential settlement between the company, Alexander and the former copywriter who alleged he harassed her.
The alleged breach came when Martin reposted a 2018 news story by Refinery29 headlined “The Morning After,” which recounted prior reporting about the contents of the settlement as part of a larger story about the agency’s post-MeToo trajectory as “one of the only large firms in the country to be led by a female duo.”
Martin had argued in court filings that the information could no longer be considered confidential because it had been so widely published. It also contended that the agreement only bound Martin executives and that there was no evidence they had a role in posting the article on the agency’s website.
McClenney called the argument about confidentiality “unpersuasive” and wrote questions about who was responsible for posting the article on Martin’s website were a matter of “genuine dispute.”
As recently as April, the case appeared headed for a three-day trial, with Alexander planning to call a roster of current and former Martin execs as witnesses: Cavallo, Tasha Dean, Beth Rilee-Kelly, Steve Humble and Britt Flippo Wall, as well as an economist who planned to testify about the potential income Alexander lost as a result of his departure.
On April 24, four days before the trial was scheduled to begin, lawyers for Martin and Alexander asked for a continuance. Nothing further was filed until last week, when both sides asked the court to dismiss the case.
Contact Reporter Ned Oliver at noliver@richmonder.org
