KALAMAZOO, MI – An attorney for William U. Parfet says the Kalamazoo businessman plans to contest a sexual harassment and wrongful discharge lawsuit filed against him in federal court.

“Mr. Parfet will be presenting a vigorous defense to this lawsuit,” attorney Nancy Abell said when asked by the Kalamazoo Gazette about the lawsuit.

Parfet, an heir to Upjohn Co. founder W.E. Upjohn, is being sued for sexual harassment, sex discrimination and wrongful termination by a woman who claims her two young children are the result of an affair that began with him in 2008 and continued until June of 2014.

The legal action by Shuang Zhang, which seeks an unspecified amount of damages, was filed on Aug. 1 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, in San Jose.

The lawsuit alleges Parfet demanded to have sex with Zhang while she worked for him as a hired consultant and as a full-time employee during business trips in Beijing, Zhanghai, Phoenix, Denver, Baltimore, San Jose and elsewhere.

Zhang’s age was not provided, but the filing indicates that she is 27 years younger than Parfet, who is age 69.

The filing was made less than a week after Parfet was named July 28 as part of a group of local philanthropists interested in donating $70.3 million to help the city of Kalamazoo pull out of an ongoing budgetary problem and cut property taxes.

Until December, Parfet was chairman and chief executive officer of MPI Research, a Mattawan-based scientific testing laboratory for drugs and chemicals that he founded in 1995. Parfet, who is married and has six children with his wife, sold his interests in that company and is executive chairman of inviCRO, a Boston-based provider of imaging solutions for drug development companies.

He is the great grandson of W.E. Upjohn, founder of The Upjohn Co., the Kalamazoo-based pharmaceutical company that is now a part of Pfizer Inc. He also is a member of the boards of Stryker Corp., Lake Forest College, Southwest Michigan First, Monsanto Co., Taubman Centers and the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts.

Zhang, a resident of Sunnyvale, Calif., was described in the lawsuit as a consultant who has worked to help put business deals together for companies in her homeland, China, and the United States. She has worked primarily for companies in the pharmaceutical, life-sciences and biotech industries and according to online sources is presently named as a principal in a venture capital company based in China. Called Cenova Capital, it invests in new life-science and healthcare firms.

The legal filing states that in past years, Zhang has worked for numerous companies in the U.S. and China and was employed by Parfet and MPI Research, as a consultant and as a salaried employee on more than one occasion as that company sought to expand abroad.

The lawsuit claims Zhang previously had been a victim of sexual abuse as well as trauma related to military training, which led to clinical depression. That played into her failure to reject the alleged sexual advances by Parfet over a period of years, according to the filing.

On two occasions she was hospitalized “for depression and suicidal ideation,” according to the lawsuit. A spokesman for Zhang’s attorney, Lawrance A. Bohm, said Bohm is deferring comment on the matter until later.

Parfet’s attorney Abell did not respond to specific questions about claims in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit describes more than one occasions on which Zhang sought financial help to raise the children — both are boys who are now ages 7 and 4 — and mentions that Parfet at one time allegedly offered to provide her $35,000 for each of the two children.

According to the filing, Zhang, who was married but believed she was unable to have children, used a suggestion by Parfet and told her husband that the children “were conceived through a sperm bank.”

The filing alleges Parfet accused Zhang of being a gold-digger in October of 2008 when he demanded that she abort the pregnancy of the first child, but she would not. It asserts that there have been paternity tests that indicate Parfet is the father of both children.

Through Monday, no response to the legal action had been filed on Parfet’s behalf in California federal. MPI Research, which the filing notes has annual revenues of more than $200 million and employs about 1,300 people, was not made a party to the lawsuit.

According to court records, Parfet and Zhang had entered an agreement indicating they were in confidential negotiations to discuss a resolution to Zhang’s civil claims and that Parfet – not MPI – would be the focus of those claims.

The agreement, which was signed in March and has signatures of Parfet and Zhang, stated that “Parfet agrees that he will not dispute that Parfet (not MPI) was Zhang’s legal employer for purposes of those claims.”

Although there was no word on whether Zhang took actions to try to stop what her lawsuit asserts was sexual harassment by Parfet, she filed a discrimination complaint with the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, and in March of 2015 was issued a federal Right to Sue notice.

According to the lawsuit, Zhang and Parfet met in January 2005 in China after she organized a business trip for Bridge Pharmaceuticals to meet potential business partners. Zhang alleges that in February of 2008, she was overcome by shock, fear and helplessness when Parfet, on a visit with a team of colleagues to China, forced her to perform sex acts.

She alleges that she was intimidated by Parfet because of his business standing but that Parfet told her he considered her “a friend and would act as her mentor.”

From 2005 to 2007, Zhang worked as a consultant for Parfet as MPI strategized to set up a joint venture in China. She claims that in February 2007 she disclosed in an email to Parfet some of her traumatic experiences – related to previous sexual abuse and other things. She said she saw him as a mentor “and trusted him to look out for her best interests.” She alleged that is why she was shocked when he began making sexual advances on her during business trips starting in 2008.

The lawsuit says Zhang sank into depression and had suicidal thoughts as a result of their interactions and in May of 2013 attempted to end her life on railway tracks. It says she also tried to jump off a building and that her sister “followed her everywhere” to prevent her from committing suicide.

Aside from working as a consultant for MPI, Zhang states that she was hired on a full-time basis by the company on two occasions – and subsequently fired: In 2009 from a position as vice president and operational liaison for MPI’s joint venture in China and in 2014 after she had taken a sales position with the company.

Among other things, the lawsuit alleges that “as an actual or proximate result of defendant’s (Parfet’s) willful and intentional discrimination, plaintiff (Zhang) has lost wages, benefits and other out-of-pocket expenses.” It also charges, in part, that “defendant unlawfully discriminated against plaintiff because of her sex and/or gender by subjecting her to constant demeaning treatment, unwelcome and inappropriate sexual advances, and illicit remarks, in addition to subjecting plaintiff to a harassment-drenched environment.”