KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Cordish Companies, which owns and operates the Kansas City Power & Light District, has filed a racketeering lawsuit against the attorney representing a former employee who accuses Cordish of wrongful termination and racial discrimination.
Cordish filed the lawsuit against Linda Dickens Tuesday in Kansas City, Kan., federal court. Cordish says Dickens was intent on extorting “large amounts of money” from the company. The lawsuit also claims she participated in witness tampering.
Dickens is representing Glen Cussamano, former manager of Mosaic and Angels Rock Bar in the district. Cussamano is suing for wrongful termination and discrimination. Cussamano says his boss told him to find a middle-aged white guy to come in a start trouble with ‘thugs’ so they could kick them out.
According to the man, who says he was hired to start the trouble, it was known as ‘being the rabbit.’
On Thursday, FOX 4’s Shannon O’Brien asked the man who calls himself ‘The Rabbit’ to describe the people he says Cordish would want kicked out of P&L.
“Well, sure you are not beating around the bush,” the man said. “The whole case is about black people. It ended up just being all blacks. Even when there were whites that were being belligerent, that’s kind of when it all came to an end. I was like, ‘You know. These people are not being very cool.'”
The Rabbit says he told Cussamano that it was starting to get pretty obvious that they were being racially selective in choosing those they wanted kicked out of the district.
“After it started being every one of them black or a group of black people, then it gets pretty obvious,” he said. “He was kind of apologetic about it, but said I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do.”
Although they did not offer an on-camera interview, Cordish officials did release a statement addressing Cussamano’s wrongful termination lawsuit and their suit against attorney Linda Dickens:
“We subsequently received numerous threats and demands that contained false and malicious statements about us and our businesses that focused on promises to use the press to embarrass us and damage our reputation, as well as use the courts for the same purposes. We stand by the allegations contained in our lawsuit filed today.”
But Linda Dickens sounded confident that the case would be dismissed.
“It’s a bullying tactic. If they had real evidence to defend the discrimination charges with, think they would spend time on that evidence and not on something bogus,” said Dickens. “We’ll file a quick motion to dismiss and it will be dismissed.”
Rachel Waller, the director of marketing for the Kansas City Power & Light District, also provided FOX 4 with this statement:
“We terminated an employee after receiving reports from the Kansas City Police Department and an independent third-party security company that the employee had struck a defenseless person and that the Police had filed charges based on the incident. Any responsible business would do the same.
We subsequently received numerous threats and demands that contained false and malicious statements about us and our businesses that focused on promises to use the press to embarrass us and damage our reputation, as well as use the courts for the same purposes. We stand by the allegations contained in our lawsuit filed today.”
