SALT LAKE CITY -- A former sales executive has sued Franklin Covey Co., saying he was stripped of lucrative sales accounts on the East Coast and then fired because he is not a Mormon.
Franklin Covey says David Melvin was fired for "poor performance."Melvin was dismissed in August 1997, two years after he was granted a company transfer from England to Maryland, where he married an American woman who is Jewish.
Melvin contends Franklin Covey -- best known for its day planners and time-management training -- is an "old-boys company" that favors members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
His suit, filed in a Maryland state court and citing a Montgomery County human-rights ordinance, says Mormons occupy all of Salt Lake-based Franklin Covey's senior and board positions and 70 percent of company jobs.
Tamera Donavon, Franklin Covey's legal director, said Tuesday the company's higher ranks are not exclusively Mormon and Melvin was "terminated for poor performance." She could not immediately say what percentage of senior executives were not Mormon.
Donavon said Melvin made no headway with a complaint to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and she called it "interesting" that Melvin had avoided federal or Utah courts, filing in Maryland.
But Marsha Oster, a former assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland and Melvin's wife, said Franklin Covey beat the couple to a Utah court.
Last July, 3rd District Judge David S. Young declared invalid "all claims" from Melvin "related to payment of compensation or commissions" by Franklin Covey.