A former Mitsubishi executive is suing his ex-em ployer because a co-worker allegedly took a picture of his penis after a booze-fueled karaoke bash – and his boss compared it to an “Italian sausage.”
In his suit filed in Manhattan federal court last month, James Bonomo, a former paper sales manager for Mitsubishi International Corp., alleged that his career effectively ended after the humiliating incident during what should have been a routine business trip to China in April 2005.
Bonomo joined MIC’s New York office in 1999, and his suit said that during his tenure, annual sales grew tenfold, from $3.5 million to $39 million.
The suit also says that during a trip to Beijing, Bonomo and his Tokyo-based superior, Tetsuya Furuichi, and a China-based Mitsubishi exec had dinner with a potential customer.
Afterward, Furuichi took everyone to a bar for some liquor-fueled karaoke, telling Bonomo beforehand, “You will be the target tonight,” the suit charges.
Later that same night, Furuichi allegedly pressured Bonomo into visiting a bathhouse for what he said would be “a non-sexual massage” with the clients. En route, Bonomo’s boss regaled him with an analysis of his admiration for the purported genital size of Italian-Americans, he said.
Despite Bonomo’s discomfort, Furuichi continued on in that vein, allegedly saying, “Italian men have penises ‘down to here,’ gesturing to his knees.” The suit noted that Bonomo is both Italian-American and gay.
At the bathhouse, a colleague from Mitsubishi’s Beijing office, Yue Zhibo, took a picture of Bonomo’s penis on his cellphone and then “refused to delete the picture” when Bonomo demanded he do so, the suit states.
After the incident, Bonomo’s boss, Furuichi, compared Bonomo’s penis to an “Italian sausage,” the plaintiff said.
Not long after the trip, Bonomo’s suit claims, his work environment became abusive and hostile. Also, the suit says, his sales targets were “set unreasonably high” in an effort to force him out of his job.
The suit asks for the court to assign compensatory damages and lawyers’ fees.
Mitsubishi denied all of the charges to The Post.
“We investigated these claims and found them to be baseless,” a Mitsubishi spokeswoman said. “No one involved in Bonomo’s [Beijing trip] said that anything like what is alleged in his suit occurred.”
She added that at no point before he left the company did Bonomo ever file a complaint, mention it to his supervisors or call the company’s anonymous tip line.
Bonomo told The Post that he stands by his story but referred all other questions to his lawyer, Jeffrey Liddle of Liddle & Robinson, who declined to comment.