Another former Pacific Office Automation employee alleges in a lawsuit that the company’s longtime top executive sexually assaulted him, the latest in a string of misconduct and abuse complaints against former CEO Doug Pitassi.
The new lawsuit also claims Pitassi directed the employee to make regular payments to another colleague aimed at “containing potential fallout” from a separate, disputed encounter.
Pitassi’s lawyer and the colleague contest the claims.
“Mr. Pitassi categorically denies the allegations in the complaint and looks forward to litigating the case in court, rather than the media,” Ben Chew, an attorney with the firm Sheppard Mullin in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.
Pitassi, 64, spent 35 years at Pacific Office Automation until he was fired at the end of last year following an investigation into his past conduct by The Oregonian/OregonLive. The company has annual sales of nearly $500 million and employs about 1,400 people across its 33 locations in the West.
The lawsuit is at least the sixth time former Pacific Office Automation employees have accused Pitassi of misconduct, including sexual harassment and sexual assault, during his time in leadership roles at the Beaverton-based office equipment business, one of Oregon’s largest privately held companies.
Those prior claims ended in confidential settlements between Pitassi and the men. Documents from one of those settlements, obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive, show Pitassi paid $1.85 million to one of the former employees to settle allegations of sexual misconduct. He has denied wrongdoing.
The new accusations mirror the earlier claims.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Multnomah County Circuit Court, alleges Pitassi assaulted a regional office manager at a 2021 sales conference in Clearwater, Florida.
Pitassi secretly spiked the manager’s drink in a hotel room at the Florida conference, forcibly undressed him and sexually assaulted him, according to the suit.
The 39-year-old manager who filed the suit worked at Pacific Office Automation from 2020 through this past March. The Oregonian/OregonLive is not naming him because he claims to be a victim of sexual assault.
He alleges sexual battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, abuse of a vulnerable person and abetting sexual discrimination as the grounds for the lawsuit and is seeking at least $15 million in damages. The suit contends he was an especially vulnerable victim because he was intoxicated during the alleged assault in Florida.
Pacific Office Automation and Doug Pitassi: A timeline
1976: Terry Newsom founds Pacific Office Automation, then called Pacific Photocopy.
1985: Doug Pitassi graduates from Portland State University.
1987: Pitassi convicted of two misdemeanors, sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a minor. He was a Centennial High School teacher at the time; both victims were teenage boys who attended the school.
1989: Pacific Office Automation hires Pitassi as a sales manager. He is eventually promoted to vice president of sales.
2007: Pitassi named company president.
2018: Pitassi becomes Pacific Office Automation’s CEO.
2022: Former employee Colin McCarthy settles sexual abuse claims against Pitassi and Pacific Office Automation and signs a non-disclosure agreement. Pitassi agrees to pay McCarthy $1.85 million. Two other former employees reach confidential settlements with the company and Pitassi.
2023: Lawsuit filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court alleging that Pitassi sexually assaulted other young, male employees.
2024: Pacific Office Automation puts Pitassi on indefinite leave following reports of his misconduct in The Oregonian/OregonLive. It fires him on Dec. 30.
2025: Adam Pritchett named permanent CEO. Pitassi reaches confidential settlement of 2023 lawsuit, then sues Pacific Office Automation for $70 million.
Prior to Pitassi’s career at Pacific Office Automation, he had been a high school teacher and water polo coach at Centennial High School in Gresham. Pitassi admitted to misconduct involving two boys who attended the school in 1987, pleading guilty to sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a minor. He was sentenced to five years of probation on misdemeanor charges.
Pitassi joined Pacific Office Automation two years later, becoming its president in 2007 and its CEO in 2018.
Pacific Office Automation is not a defendant in Thursday’s lawsuit and declined comment on it, citing ongoing litigation with Pitassi.
After Pacific Office Automation fired Pitassi, he sued the company for $70 million alleging that it withheld bonus payments the company owed him and wouldn’t cash out his ownership stake in the business.
Pitassi said in his suit that former employees made false accusations against him, exploiting his secret identity as a gay man.
The company said Pitassi has had no role with the business since his firing.
“POA has robust policies in place to ensure a safe and supportive environment for our 1,400 diverse employees, along with clear reporting mechanisms for any issues that may arise,” Andrew Salgado, the company’s general counsel, said in a written statement. “POA remains committed to protecting the integrity of our workplace and the safety of our employees.”
The lawsuit against Pitassi says the plaintiff was working for the Portland Timbers, where he negotiated deals with team sponsors, when he met Pitassi. Pacific Office Automation has sponsorship agreements with many sports teams, including the Timbers.
He alleges that Pitassi recruited him to work for Pacific Office Automation, opening a regional office in Reno. But while the man’s family moved to Nevada, the plaintiff stayed behind temporarily, working for Pitassi at Pacific Office Automation’s Beaverton headquarters.
Soon after his hiring in 2020, the man alleges Pitassi began making sexual comments, pressing him about his sex life, questioning his sexual orientation and criticizing his wife, according to the lawsuit. Pitassi repeatedly pressured the man to have sex with him, asked him to have sex with a sex worker and subjected him more than 100 times to “unwanted, offensive sexual touching,” the lawsuit claims.
The suit describes Pitassi’s conduct as “severe, pervasive and sustained” and alleges it took place repeatedly over a four-year period ending when Pitassi left Pacific Office Automation amid a cloud of scandal.
The alleged 2021 sexual assault in Clearwater, Florida, is at the heart of the accusations.
The lawsuit says the man passed out after half a drink in Pitassi’s hotel room during the conference, then awoke to find himself “naked below the waist with indications of having been undressed by force and could perceive that he was being sexually assaulted” by Pitassi.
The man “felt physically helpless during this episode,” the lawsuit states.
The Oregonian/OregonLive contacted Clearwater police to ask for any reports made about the alleged sexual assault. A police department spokesperson said only that the “case has been referred to the State’s Attorney’s Office for prosecution and an active investigation.”
The police department declined to release any records or say when the report was filed, citing the ongoing investigation. The State Attorney’s Office declined to comment.
The plaintiff says in his complaint that he had been in treatment for an unspecified substance abuse issue at the time of the conference. Records show he pleaded no contest in Oregon in 2020 to cocaine possession.
The lawsuit also alleges that Pitassi “required” the plaintiff to funnel payments to another employee, who is identified in the filing only by his initials.
The lawsuit states that Pitassi “was alleged to have previously sexually assaulted (the other employee) on a houseboat during a POA trip to Lake Shasta” in California and that Pitassi allegedly acknowledged to the plaintiff “that he had engaged in sexual contact” with that employee on the trip.
Pitassi subsequently directed the plaintiff to “facilitate numerous significant payments” to that employee through the company payroll department as a way of “containing potential fallout” from the Lake Shasta trip, the lawsuit alleges. It does not specify how much money was involved or when the payments were made.
But the employee, in an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive, denied the alleged Lake Shasta assault ever occurred. He also signed a statement in 2022, provided to The Oregonian/OregonLive by Pacific Office Automation’s general counsel, denying the alleged assault on the 2018 trip.
“If I was sexually assaulted I think I would have known,” the man said in a phone interview last week.
He said he worked for Pacific Office Automation from 2018 through 2019 and later returned to the company, where he remains employed.
He also said the plaintiff never funneled money to him to keep quiet. He said the plaintiff was his supervisor in Reno and was a conduit for commissions he had earned in his sales role at the company.
“That’s all that he had an involvement in. He never once directly paid me,” the man said.
Peter Janci, the plaintiff’s attorney, said they plan to fully investigate the Lake Shasta episode during the lawsuit’s discovery process.
“We allege what we know based upon what our client was told,” Janci said, “and it’ll be up to a jury to decide what happened in regards to that incident.”
Clarification: Pacific Office Automation fired Doug Pitassi on Dec. 30, 2024, and announced it in January.
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