A real estate broker who boasts of rich and famous clients like actors James Franco and Kirsten Dunst was a terrible boss who made his personal assistant procure illegal drugs for him and witness lewd sexual encounters, a new lawsuit alleges.
In the Manhattan federal court suit, filed Tuesday, Amy Gagnon said she was forced to deal with Douglas Elliman broker Jared Seligman’s alleged bad-boy behavior within weeks after getting hired to work for him in May 2016.
“It quickly became clear to Ms. Gagnon that being Mr. Seligman’s assistant would require her to submit to the behavior of a man who had no concern about the bounds of professional conduct or even the law,” said the discrimination and wage lawsuit, which named both Douglas Elliman and Seligman as defendants.
“Within weeks of beginning her employment,” Seligman started to pressure Gagnon to find and procure illegal drugs for him, the lawsuit says. He also subjected her to his lurid sexual encounters by forcing her to work out of his apartment while he had sex in a nearby bedroom, the suit alleges.
The lawsuit describes one alleged instance where “a strange man that she had never met came over and he and Mr. Seligman retreated to the bedroom adjacent to where Ms. Gagnon was attempting to work.” The two men proceeded to have sex, despite “the fact that only a thin wall separated Ms. Gagnon from the sounds of the two men having raucous sexual intercourse,” the lawsuit claims.
“There was no question that Mr. Seligman both knew that Ms. Gagnon could hear him having sex and wanted her to do so,” the lawsuit claimed.
Gagnon also described an incident where her boss groped his Botox doctor in front of her, making lewd comments while doing it, including, “I want your d–k in my face,” the lawsuit claims.
Seligman, whose listings include a $40 million apartment in Chelsea and a $9.5 million apartment on the Upper East Side, didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
In a 2014 article for the New York Times, Seligman was described as “a wunderkind real estate agent to the downtown A-list.” Clients listed in the article included included Franco, Dunst, Ally Hilfiger and Agyness Deyn.
“The bar to get into my business is very low, but the bar to be successful is very, very high,” he told The Times.