ExBay Area exec settles harass suit for $1.8 million

A former Bay Area venture capitalist and his companies will pay $1.8 million to settle a lawsuit by the state accusing him of sexually harassing an employee and repeatedly touching her without her consent.

The Department of Fair Employment and Housing announced the settlement Friday with Lee William “Bill”

McNutt, the Silicon Valley Growth Syndicate, which he cofounded, and International Direct Mail Consultants, which he owns.

In a lawsuit in July, the department alleged that McNutt took the woman, the companies’ vice president for operations and communications, on trips in 2017 when he touched her under her clothes without her consent. On a companymandated trip to La Jolla (San Diego County), the suit said, he took her to a nude beach, where he disrobed, and at their lodgings, he later gave her a massage, sliding his hands under her shorts.

The woman’s lawyer sent McNutt a complaint in March 2018 alleging violations of California laws and suggesting she be put on paid leave, but instead she was dismissed in June 2018, the suit said.

In addition to the $1.8 million, the settlement prohibits McNutt from videotaping or photographing women or girls unrelated to him, and from hiring students from Southern Methodist University, where the woman had been a student. McNutt also attended SMU, and the Dallas Morning News has reported that the university barred him from campus in 2009 after complaints from female students.

McNutt lives in Dallas, and the Silicon Valley Growth Syndicate, formerly based in San Francisco, is now in Little Rock, Ark., where it invests in startup businesses.

David Oates, a spokesman for McNutt, said McNutt and his companies consider the state’s lawsuit baseless.

“However, in light of the current gender discrimination environment, they ultimately opted to spare their family and friends from the ongoing stress that defending the suit brought and agreed to this settlement,” Oates said.