FIGHTING DIRTY
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Wal-Mart’s fired ad chief accused the retailing giant of waging a “smear campaign” after it disclosed embarrassing e-mails as evidence of an alleged office romance.
In a statement sent by her attorney, Julie Roehm, who’s suing Wal-Mart, decried the retailer’s tactics and said it took private e-mails out of context to bolster claims that she had an affair with subordinate Sean Womack.
“They outman me with private investigators, computer hackers, ex-CIA operatives, former FBI men and an army of public-relations operatives,” she said in a statement.
Roehm said Wal-Mart didn’t like the changes she tried to implement and hinted that top executives might have had trouble “taking the advice of a woman.”
“But somewhere along the way, senior executives at Wal-Mart seemed to feel that maybe change wasn’t such a good idea,” she said.
Roehm, 36, said Wal-Mart is trumping up the alleged affair and accusations that she violated company policy to avoid paying her what she is due.
“Wal-Mart is insinuating things about my personal life and pretending I violated some code of ethics with advertisers, all to distract from the reality that it didn’t want my form of progressive marketing.”
Since she was fired, her family has lived off savings for her son’s college tuition fund while she wages an expensive legal battle against a deep-pocketed company with countless resources.
Wal-Mart has filed a counter-complaint accusing Roehm of breaking company rules by carrying on the alleged affair, including damaging excerpts from private e-mail exchanges between her and Womack.
It also claims she accepted meals and gifts and steered its $580 million ad account to agency DraftFCB while also negotiating to get jobs there for her and Womack.
Roehm’s statement suggested she might throw in the towel when she said she didn’t “want to waste time looking backward.” However, neither side showed any willingness to back down yesterday and her attorney said she plans to pursue her suit.
“The facts in our counterclaim speak for themselves,” a Wal-Mart spokesman said.