A former writer on the CBS show “Matlock” sued the network on Wednesday, claiming that repeated racist and sexual comments by some of the show’s leadership created a hostile work environment for him and other Black members of the cast and crew.
The writer, John Lowe, filed his lawsuit in California Superior Court, seeking compensatory and punitive damages along with lost wages. The suit also names the “Matlock” producer and showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman and the executive producers Nicki Renna and Jeffrey Lieber as defendants.
A spokeswoman for CBS Studios said in a statement that the network took all workplace complaints seriously. “In this instance, a thorough investigation was completed, and we were unable to find support for his allegations,” she said of Mr. Lowe. “We look forward to vigorously defending this lawsuit.”
Ron Zambrano, a lawyer for Mr. Lowe, said in a statement that CBS should be “ashamed” for having allowed the “blatant racism and harassment” his client experienced while working on the show. “Mr. Lowe was subjected to degrading and unlawful conduct,” he said.
Mr. Lowe was hired to work on “Matlock,” the rebooted series starring Kathy Bates, in October 2023, according to the lawsuit. At some point after that, the suit says, Ms. Urman and Mr. Lieber commented on how tightly Mr. Lowe’s clothes fit and announced that his shoe size meant he was “well-endowed down there.”
Ms. Urman and Mr. Lieber’s comment “invoked the racist stereotype that Black men have larger genitalia,” the lawsuit says, adding that Mr. Lowe understood the comment as a “demeaning reference to his race.”
The complaint also says that Ms. Urman, Ms. Renna and Mr. Lieber had on multiple occasions interrogated Mr. Lowe about his dating life, questioned his sexuality and at one point asked him “how he handled a man’s genitals.”
Ms. Renna, according to the lawsuit, also made a racially and sexually derogatory comment about Eme Ikwuakor, a Black cast member of the show, saying that he could “barely read” and that he was saved by the size of his penis.
The lawsuit goes on to describe a number of other episodes involving Ms. Urman, including a late-night telephone call to Mr. Lowe in which she told him that she was in bed wearing only her underwear and another time when Mr. Lowe was coerced to care for her dog, which she refused to keep because her children did not like its black color. “Plaintiff reasonably perceived this conduct as racially motivated harassment and an exercise of supervisory power designed to burden him,” the lawsuit said.
Ms. Urman also called Juneteenth, the annual commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States, “Coonteenth,” the lawsuit says, adding that the comment had “shocked” Mr. Lowe and colleagues within earshot.
Mr. Lowe’s employment ended last July, about two weeks after Ms. Urman’s Juneteenth comment, the complaint says, adding that there had not been a performance-based or creative justification for his termination.
Since Mr. Lowe’s termination, he has suffered loss of income, emotional distress, humiliation and medical expenses for mental health treatment, his lawyers said.
Mr. Lowe “deserved to be treated with dignity and respect, as everyone should expect in the workplace, not subjected to these outrageous and illegal racial slurs and sexual harassment without any connection to his work on the show,” Mr. Zambrano, the lawyer for Mr. Lowe, said in a statement.
“Matlock,” a remake of a 1980s and ’90s series starring Andy Griffith, was the fourth most-watched network show last season, averaging 11.5 million viewers on CBS and Paramount+.
Last year, an actor on the show, David Del Rio, left shortly before the premiere of its second season, after CBS conducted an investigation, a person with knowledge of the matter told The New York Times. The person declined to disclose the focus of the investigation.
Mr. Del Rio’s character was written out of the series.
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