After former leaders of the Woodstock Inn and Resort filed a lawsuit against their past colleagues, alleging an abusive culture at the well-known hotel and nearby Billings Farm and Museum, the defendants filed their own claims on Monday, highlighting what they assert were highly questionable payments to the suit’s original whistleblower.
The counterclaims allege that Ellen Pomeroy, former board chair of the Woodstock Foundation, and Sal Iannuzzi, the board’s former vice chair, showed inappropriate personal and financial favoritism toward a whistleblower, Anna Berez, who sought to expose a toxic work environment at the inn and farm.
The suit, which Pomeroy and Iannuzzi filed last month in Vermont Superior Court Windsor County unit, portrays an abusive culture at Woodstock’s flagship tourist destinations — including sexual misconduct, discrimination and retaliation against whistleblowers that was allegedly upheld by management.
The Woodstock Foundation owns the Woodstock Inn as well as Billings Farm and Museum, a dairy farm and operating partner of the adjoining Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park.
In a letter to staff that was provided to VTDigger, James Sligar, the foundation’s chair, reiterated many of the counterclaims filed in court and summarized the findings from an investigation led by an outside counsel hired by the foundation.
The letter and court documents detail a series of payments to Anna Berez, who first brought allegations of widespread...
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