The company says the case is an attempt at extortion by Stacy Pinney, 32, whose lawsuit in King County Superior Court has generated stacks of documents that provide a glimpse inside her mercurial romance with the 40-year-old son from a powerful Seattle department store dynasty.
Pinney says she tried to end the relationship in its first year and wants unspecified damages for the lost wages and emotional distress she claims to have suffered as a result of Peter Nordstrom's unwanted workplace advances. The company calls her story "revisionist history."
A trial has been set for January, but Nordstrom hopes the case will be thrown out after the judge hears the company's motion to have the case dismissed next month.
Nordstrom officials are so certain the case is baseless that they took the unusual step of showing The Stranger sealed court filings, photographs of Pinney and Peter Nordstrom happily together, and personal e-mails the couple exchanged. They believe these documents show Pinney was more than willing to be the object of Peter Nordstrom's affections, and that she filed the suit only after he balked at buying her a house and marrying her.
"There are times when you have to stand up and defend yourself," says Brooke White, director of public relations for Nordstrom. "We think he is being preyed upon because of his name and his financial position."
A wealthy man and president of Nordstrom's full-line stores, Peter Nordstrom is the great-grandson of John W. Nordstrom, a Swedish immigrant and prospector who founded the company's first store in Seattle in 1901. By the late 1980s the retail chain had gone nationwide, and last year it reported $125 million in profits. Peter Nordstrom leads the company along with his brothers and father, who reinstated family control in 2000 after non-family leadership steered Nordstrom into a sales slump in the late 1990s. Peter Nordstrom is also a major investor in the Sonics, a partner in the local independent record label Loveless Records, and the owner of more than $20 million in Nordstrom stock, according to recent reports.
Neither Peter Nordstrom nor Pinney nor their attorneys would comment on the suit. But in pre-trial court filings, a basic outline of the relationship emerges:
The two began dating in 1993 when both worked at a Nordstrom store in Orange County, California. Pinney was 23 and selling shoes. Peter Nordstrom was 31 and a regional manager.
She asked him out, he agreed, and they dated, on and off, for about seven years. She vacationed with the Nordstrom family. They referred to each other as "my boyfriend" and "my girlfriend." In 1998 and 2000 the couple briefly lived together in Seattle. Then in October 2000, the relationship ended.
Shortly before it ended, Pinney terminated her career at Nordstrom. Whether she quit voluntarily or under pressure from Peter Nordstrom is disputed, but Pinney never filed a complaint of sexual harassment with Nordstrom while she worked for the company.
In July 2001, almost a year after she quit, Pinney filed her lawsuit, which contends that she told Peter Nordstrom in October 1993 that she wanted to end their relationship and was met with continuing harassment.
The company says Pinney's own actions refute her claims: She was sexually intimate with him as recently as March 2001, and she moved in with him twice, once in 1998 and once in 2000. "Would you live with your harasser?" spokeswoman White asks.
In court filings, Pinney's Seattle lawyer Abraham Arditi acknowledges that his client sometimes went back to Peter Nordstrom willingly. But he says at other times she did not: "The times when she tried to avoid Mr. Nordstrom clearly outweigh the other times. And it is during these times that Ms. Pinney's claim arises."
He explains: "Each time she tried to extricate herself from the relationship, [Peter] Nordstrom would importune her with calls, flowers, and visits in the workplace, until he managed to draw her back into the relationship."
Pinney is not the only former girlfriend the company is now defending Peter Nordstrom against. Michele Overson, whom Peter Nordstrom also dated while she was a Nordstrom employee, recently filed a sexual-harassment suit against him and Nordstrom, Inc. in San Diego.
According to court filings, Peter Nordstrom has dated at least 13 Nordstrom employees since he started working for the company as a teenager--behavior that once led a company official to caution Peter Nordstrom about the risks of dating co-workers.
The company says Overson's lawsuit is simply a shakedown--and notes that Overson filed her complaints after getting fired. "[Overson] has a track record of seeking money from other men she's been involved with," says White.
Will Pinney's claim grow into an embarrassing public trial for the Nordstrom company, or be tossed out by the court? The judge will weigh the matter in a few weeks.
