When One Door Closes, Another Opens

Below please find segment VIII, dated 8-15-24, explaining the truth about why Toray Plastics America (TPA) sued me in December 2018 when they falsely claimed a common reader could identify TPA in my book, Successful Leaders Aren't Bullies, released September of 2018.

Fifty one (51) months after filing, Toray dismissed the case, with prejudice, and paid my legal fees, basically acknowledging their lawsuit was frivolous. I signed nothing.  

Also during this time, Federal and RI State lawmakers found Non Disclosure Agreement Laws unjust and unenforceable.  This allows me to share the truth about Toray and the case. 

However, TPA's intended damage was achieved, at least in the short term.  The printing and distribution of "Successful Leaders Aren't Bullies" was stopped and iced after Toray threatened my publisher.  

TPA terminated me in September 2017 in retaliation for sharing my TPA shooting threat investigation with a Japanese Toray Expat who requested it.  

In May of 2017, after receiving my completed workplace shooting internal investigation, Toray American administrators sat on the report despite the glaring and obvious shooting threat it outlined, posed by angered front line  workers and instigated by the abusive behaviors of their bullying manager.  

When I was hired, two people reported to this manager.  After three (3) months, one resigned, stating they could no longer tolerate this manager's illegal actions  towards workers during daily rounds.  

After six (6) months of my working at Toray Plastics America, the other person who reported to this bullying manager was terminated, for not following orders to bully.  

When this person was fired, another employee stopped by my office claiming executives were worried the terminated worker might return to Toray with a gun.  

These same executives were sitting on my report, stating the same bullying manager's behaviors could also instigate a frontline worker shooting.

The circumstances warranted my sharing these threats, and my report, to then Toray Plastics America's president, who preached and encouraged open door policies.  I thought they would take action to stop the abuse, as all my other clients responded to comparable reports.  

Instead, they gave me "thirty (30) days on the beach," a stern warning, and lecture on the importance of following the chain of command.  I asked if I was being terminated.  They said no, they liked my work, but wanted me to "think long and hard about what I wanted to do with my internal shooting investigation," or, in other words, the truth. 

In those thirty days, I finished compiling a manuscript I had compiled since high school, describing how good coaches, teams, and teachers helped me overcome seven (7) of ten (10) adverse childhood experiences.  It shared the factors used by people and organizations to transcend trauma and abuse. 

Nowhere in the manuscript was Toray mentioned or my experiences described.  The bullies at Toray driving the lawsuit, in true narcissistic form, assumed the whole book was about them.  It has little, if anything, to do with them. Regardless, the NDA I signed with TPA, now void, did allow me to source material from my Toray experiences.  

Within ten days of submitting my manuscript to friends who I thought might have publishing contacts, I signed a generous publishing agreement with a known publisher whose books are distributed by Simon & Schuster. They asked if I could write a book entitled, "Successful Leaders Aren't Bullies."

Although this first book is not political and describes cases where I helped organizations identify, address, prevent, and transcend workplace bullying, I think having then President Donald Trump displaying bullying behaviors in public on a regular basis influenced their title recommendation.  

Next:  How Toray Plastics America attempted to bully me when I returned to work after my thirty (30) days "on the beach."