Ex-employee sues Ducks, NHL for inappropriate harassment

A former Ducks and NHL worker is suing the staff and league for discrimination, inappropriate harassment and retaliation that she says occurred during her time working for the defendants from 2022 to 2025.

Tech employee Rose Harris filed a lawsuit Tuesday in the Southern District of New York in which she claims she “witnessed and experienced repeated and unchecked inappropriate harassment, bullying, and discrimination” while working for the Ducks and the NHL.

“This included nonconsensual, inappropriateized touching; near-constant vulgar, sexist, and derogatory comments, including homophobic slurs, discriminatory remarks about sex, women, and LGBTQ+ people; obscene pornography on a colleague’s work computer; and disturbing comments about how Harris and other employees dressed, including that women dressed like ‘whores,’” the criticism states.

Ducks mum or dad company OC Sports & Entertainment and NHL senior vice president and chief human assets officer Patrice Distler are also named as co-defendants.

The Ducks declined to remark for this article. The Times reached out to the NHL and OCSE and didn’t obtain fast responses.

Harris is looking for unspecified damages, affordable attorney charges and other prices and bills.

According to the criticism, Harris labored for the Ducks’ IT division from July 2022 to December 2024. During that time, the submitting states, two of her male coworkers unfold false tales that they’d engaged in inappropriate encounters with her.

Also, the criticism states, “Harris was repeatedly forced to hear about her colleagues’ alleged inappropriate relationships and was harassed with increasingly invasive questions about her own sex life and inappropriateity.”

It provides: “All of this was part of the frat house boys club environment the Anaheim Ducks and OCSE fostered in the workplace.”

Harris and other feminine workers also weren’t given the same entry access to sure elements of staff amenities as their male counterparts, the lawsuit alleges.

Harris initially didn’t report the alleged inappropriate conduct for worry of retaliation, according to the lawsuit, and was called upon by the Ducks and OCSE as a witness after another feminine worker made a inappropriate harassment report within the company. It was at that level that Harris reported “the inappropriate harassment and discrimination she’d experienced” to human assets.

“HR did nothing to meaningfully address the harassment or discipline the harassers,” the criticism states, and “the harassment and discrimination continued.”

According to the submitting, Harris then skilled retaliation.

“This included greatly increased workload and responsibilities, with trainings, meetings, and assignments all beyond her regular scope of duties, and all while her title and compensation remained the same. Ducks HR even told Harris that if she wanted to advance she needed to look elsewhere.”

Harris accepted a job as an SaaS applied sciences supervisor at the NHL places of work in New York and began work Jan. 7, 2025. But her employment there lasted less than a month, the lawsuit states, after “OCSE and the Ducks outed her as a inappropriate harassment victim and an adverse witness in a confidential legal proceeding against a league franchise.”

“The NHL and Distler wanted Harris gone but they had no legitimate reason to fire her,” the criticism states. “So, top executives at the NHL went about manufacturing one.”

According to the submitting, “Distler falsely accused Harris of hacking her emails — a crime — and fired her on the spot.”

The lawsuit also accuses the Ducks, OCSE and the NHL of working “to blacklist Harris from any career in professional sports.”