In a lawsuit recently filed in the Superior Court for the County of Santa Clara, Adam Witherspoon - a former founding employee of Apple's earlier-this-year acquisition Color Labs - has accused the Color Labs co-founder and CEO Bill Nguyen of creating "an extremely hostile, unsafe, and harassing atmosphere."

With Apple having acquired the intellectual property and engineering team of Color Labs `in or around' September this year, the lawsuit filed by Witherspoon - ex-quality assurance engineer at Color Labs - chiefly alleges that Color Labs had violated three labor codes: retaliation for reporting hazardous conditions of work; reporting of unlawful conduct; and retaliation in violation of public policy.

According to the lawsuit - via which Witherspoon is seeking damages for alleged humiliation and also for lost wages and benefits -, Nguyen not only intentionally subjected Witherspoon to emotional anguish, but also "routinely humiliated, harassed, ridiculed, exploited, and pushed employees, who departed in droves."

The complaint filed by Witherspoon also mentions that when Nguyen worked out the Color Labs acquisition deal with Apple, he had assured Witherspoon that the transition team to Apple will include Witherspoon; all the more so since "every other member of the engineering team was going to be hired by Apple."

However, with Witherspoon eventually being the only technical employee left out of the Color Labs-Apple deal, Witherspoon said in the complaint that his exclusion clearly marked Color Labs' retaliation for cooperating with a probe into Nguyen's misconduct.