Photo by Maryland Route 5

Conditions continue to sour over at the Tabard Inn.

The Washington Post’s Tim Carman reports that four former employees have sued the inn’s corporation, headed by owner Fritzi Cohen, for harassment, breach of contract and employment discrimination.

Carman has more on the suit filed by former Tabard wedding director and special-events manager Erin Claxton, who resigned on May 26:

In her suit, Claxton claims that on April 5, recently hired hotel manager Lars Rusins “made physical contact with [her] body from behind while she was leaning over to glance at a list of information relevant to the matter at hand.”

Later that same day, according to the suit, Rusins allegedly made a comment about Claxton in front of two other Tabard employees: “And we thought they hired her just because she’s cute.”

That evening, Claxton phoned Cohen, who allegedly told the wedding director to “take it as a compliment,” the suit notes. The complaint also alleges that Stavrum picked up the phone and “began making additional inappropriate comments” and noises. “He asked if Rusins’s comments were similar to his inappropriate noises,” the suit states.

Claxton alleges that Cohen failed to deal with the harassment, which led her to resign.

The Tabard’s former hotel manager is also suing, saying he was retaliated against for opposing the harassment then was fired. The third suit filed by two other former employees claims they were fired without cause.

D.C Superior Court records show that all three lawsuits were filed in June.

A group of current and former employees of the Tabard are unhappy with the direction Cohen and her boyfriend, new Tabard board member Keith Stavrum, are taking the Inn in, and are trying to gain control. (This new direction includes the firing of Cohen’s son Jeremiah, who was the Inn’s general manager for 18 years.) Employees own 30 percent of the business under an employee stock ownership plan.

Carolyn DeWitt, organizer of Save the Tabard, a campaign to increase the employee ownership stake, calls the lawsuits “an absolute last resort” in a statement.

“We have pursued and continue to pursue every option to save the Tabard that people know and love—a place dedicated to its staff where employees are treated like human beings, not disposable objects,” DeWitt says. “Allowing the kind of mistreatment of women and longtime employees alleged in these three claims was something that many employees and patrons could not continue to live with. That’s not the Tabard that customers and employees have been loyal to all these years. We never wanted it to get to this point.”

At this point, the employees’ Indiegogo campaign has raised just over $7,000 of a $564,000 goal, even though the perks are quite good. A $3,000 donation, for example, will force the Tabard’s mixologist to have the Save the Tabard logo tattooed on his body. Save the Tabard is also soliciting more traditional investors.