A prominent Knoxville restaurateur called a “serial harasser” by his former female employees now faces a racial discrimination lawsuit by a biracial woman who worked for his business for 40 years until he allegedly unleashed racial slurs and other insults against her.
Tammy Dawn Waller, 63, filed a civil rights complaint in federal court on Sept. 15 against Copper Cellar Corporation and its president and owner, Mike Chase, 79, alleging racial harassment and a hostile work environment and accusing Chase of verbal abuse, racial hostility, and retaliation.
According to her complaint, obtained by Atlanta Black Star, Waller served as a general manager and assistant general manager during her 40-year career with the Copper Cellar restaurant group, which includes 20 locations in East Tennessee.
She arrived for her shift at the Copper Cellar steakhouse in Knox County around 2 p.m. on Sept. 22, 2025, when a coworker asked her to help resolve a customer’s bill. While doing so, she said she noticed Chase seated at the bar.
After she finished helping her coworker, she turned to find Chase standing in a doorway glaring at her, who then asked her, “What are you doing here?”
Waller says she responded that she was working, to which Chase replied, “They don’t like you here, you’re Black!”
Waller told him that she is biracial, adding that “she must be liked there because she had been asked to come work at that location,” the lawsuit says.
“Well, I need you off my payroll,” Chase allegedly said, followed by, “You’re fat, you need to get some weight off you.”
Waller says she responded that her husband likes her the way she is, to which Chase clapped back that her husband may need to lose “25, 50, 100 pounds.”
Several employees, including a manager and those Waller supervised, witnessed the exchange, according to the complaint. Some approached her and said she “should not have to tolerate such treatment,” while Waller, attempting to de-escalate the situation, told them it was “okay,” even though she was “visibly upset and humiliated,” according to the lawsuit.
As she tried to compose herself and returned to the service area, Chase approached her again and asked her how long she had worked for him. After Waller told him “40 years,” Chase allegedly said that he was about to meet with an attorney and might have that attorney speak to her, which she took as a veiled threat to end her employment.
Shaken by the conversation, Waller went out to her car and texted an area manager and a general manager of the corporation, reporting Chase’s conduct and telling them she was unable to continue working on that shift.
She also called a personal friend and colleague in the company’s finance department, who learned about the incident, became upset and apologized to her.
The lawsuit says Waller “suffered humiliation, intimidation, and embarrassment in front of employees she supervised, and severe emotional distress, and experienced a betrayal of trust after having dedicated her entire adult working career” to Copper Cellar and Mike Chase.
The conduct by Chase was “not an isolated instance of a personality conflict but was a racially motivated act by the individual holding ultimate authority over Plaintiff’s employment,” the complaint contends.
Such denigrating verbal attacks and other unwelcome comments about his female employees’ physical appearance were business as usual for Chase, according to the lawsuit by Waller and several other female employees who have previously sued Copper Cellar and its reportedly loose-lipped owner.
Chase “had a habit and routine practice” of creating a hostile work environment by verbally harassing employees after entering one of the restaurants, often appearing intoxicated.
Chase would then “proclaim that he was the owner of the Copper Cellar Corporation and either expressly state or intimate that there was nothing anyone could do to him.” As a result, the lawsuit says the company would not enforce its antidiscrimination policy against him effectively.
The complaint references prior lawsuits against Chase and the restaurant group for harassing conduct and a hostile work environment, noting that upper-level managers have admitted they know about Chase’s inappropriate conduct but said they can’t rein him in because he’s the owner.
They include a civil lawsuit filed by another longtime employee, Jessica Henry, who filed a sexual harassment complaint in Knox County Chancery Court in June, alleging that Chase engaged in repeated sexual harassment, inappropriate touching, name-calling and bullying.
Chase allegedly made remarks about her breasts, called her “hot” and “a whore,” told her, “Come sit on Daddy’s lap,” and asked, “When can I take you home?” according to her complaint, and threatened to fire her if she didn’t comply, reported local news organization WVLT.
He also used racial slurs while in the restaurant, the lawsuit says.
Henry said she put up with years of unwelcome comments and behavior from Chase, which became so intense recently that she reported 37 instances of his misconduct in the last year to management, who did nothing to intervene.
In April, Copper Cellar and Chase settled another sexual harassment suit by former server and bartender Harley Denning, who said she left the job in May 2024 after Chase made multiple unwelcome sexual comments toward her at work, referring to her body parts and touching her in inappropriate ways.
An area director testified in a pre-trial deposition in her case that he was aware that Chase had used a racial slur in the workplace and testified that he didn’t approve of the “racial” way that Chase talked about Black people, local news outlet WBIR reported.
Though she reported the sexual harassment and hostile environment to management on multiple occasions, the company did nothing to stop it, Denning asserted. She sought several million dollars in damages and settled with Copper Cellar and Chase for an undisclosed amount just days before a scheduled jury trial.
Waller alleges that before the September 2025 encounter in the restaurant with Chase, she had called the company’s human resources director to complain about Chase after he was allegedly overheard by a white female employee “using the N-word while discussing Black people with a white guest.” Chase had also told that employee to lose some weight and had offered to pay for her weight-loss treatment, the lawsuit says.
Waller accuses Copper Cellar and Chase of racial discrimination and a hostile work environment in violation of federal and state civil rights law, and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, in violation of Tennessee common law.
She says she suffered severe emotional distress, humiliation, embarrassment, mental anguish, and other damages, and seeks a jury trial to determine compensatory damages not to exceed $1.2 million for each count, and punitive damages not to exceed $3 million for each count, as well as an award for back pay, front pay and lost benefits.
She also wants the court to order Copper Cellar to adopt and enforce effective anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies and training and to issue a protective order preventing Chase from contacting her and requiring him to stay at least 1,000 feet away from her.
Attorneys for Copper Cellar Corporation and Chase did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Atlanta Black Star. The defendants have 21 days after receiving the complaint to respond in U.S. District Court in Tennessee.
