Connecticut grocery chain Stew Leonard’s settled a decade-long lawsuit Wednesday over a depraved ex-employee swiping female coworkers’ underwear just as the trial was about to kick off.
The popular supermarket brand reached an eleventh-hour settlement with two women who sued the company for negligence in 2019 for employing a convicted burglar with a history of panty theft dating back to his high school years, the Greenwich Time reported.
The former worker, Robert M. Brown, of Burlington, broke into the women’s homes and raided their drawers before taking off with bags stuffed full with their undergarments, according to the suit.
The case had been rotting on the docket for seven years, making it one of the oldest unresolved matters in the Bridgeport Judicial District Court house, according to the local outlet.
“After seven years, we are happy we have reached an agreement and settled,” the chain’s CEO Stew Leonard Jr. said in a statement.
Details of the deal were not released publicly.
Brown pulled off the first heist in 2018 by tracking down a coworker’s home address through a broken file cabinet at the store, according to the court docs. He then swiped her house key from an unlocked office, and let himself into her Wethersfield home, where he slipped off his shoes, wandered around, and left with a shopping bag full of her unmentionables.
She recognized her Stew Leonard’s colleague as the culprit when she reviewed her own home security footage.
A second woman said Brown grabbed her house key from an unsecured locker room and hit her Wethersfield home, where he snatched her panties the same day.
Stew Leonard’s fought the negligence claims, arguing the break-ins happened off company property and on Brown’s own time, and that it would have been wrong to warn coworkers about his lengthy criminal past.
The serial panty thief was first arrested back in 2006 for stealing underwear and bras from the homes of high school classmates in Harwinton and Burlington. The pervert was convicted, and a follow-up investigation netted him a child pornography conviction that sent him to prison.
For the crimes against his coworkers, he pleaded no contest in 2020 to two counts of third-degree burglary and was sentenced for two years behind bars and five years of probation.
Both victims were in court Wednesday but left without saying a word, according to the local publication. Each woman suffered mental anguish, invasion of privacy, sexual violation, and a lasting blow to their quality of life, they said in the suits.
Brown no longer works at Stew Leonard’s. Both women have moved on to new jobs.