A lawyer who works for TCP (NYSE: TCPI) has filed a lawsuit against CEO Ellis Yan and the company itself, claiming that Yan has run the lighting products company in a reckless and unethical way — and threatened her for bringing it up with the company’s board.

In the lawsuit filed Thursday, Feb. 26, Laura Hauser, who works as general counsel for the Aurora-based company, says that the board’s audit committee recently ordered Yan to “promptly and substantially” change the way he runs the company. Among the problems cited in the lawsuit: Yan allegedly ordered the company to produce 40,000 LED lamps labeled with the “UL” mark even though they had not been approved by the product testing company. The lamps eventually failed UL tests, the lawsuit states. The complaint says that Yan called Hauser — who provided information to the committee — at her home on the evening of Feb. 3. After asking her questions about her involvement with the committee, Yan allegedly said, “You will be sorry,” and hung up the phone. Hauser then started working from home, only going into the office when she knew that Yan was out of the country, the lawsuit states. The complaint also states that she was “physically assaulted” by Yan in 2013. The complaint portrays Yan as a bully who regularly belittled and screamed at employees, including Hauser. His “behavior has been the principal reason for many TCP midlevel employees leaving the company,” the suit claims. For instance, Yan allegedly told two managers to stop talking about the company’s problems related to UL certification and legal issues, the suit states. He reportedly told them that he’d fire TCP’s entire compliance team if they don’t follow his orders. The lawsuit listed some of the other issues raised by the audit committee, which worked with the law firm Jones Day: Allegedly, Yan failed to provided clear financial information to TCP’s chief financial officer, made major decisions without consulting other executives, disregarded company policies and imposed “unrealistic performance demands and pressures on employees as to potentially promote inappropriate employee conduct damaging to the company.” The lawsuit states that Yan and his family control 70% of the shares of TCP International Holdings Ltd., which owns Aurora-based Technical Consumer Products Inc. The value of those shares has plummeted: TCP’s stock as of 4:03 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 27, was down 57.25%, or $3.67, for the day, to $2.74. The parent company issued a statement saying it is “currently in the process of evaluating these claims and intends to vigorously defend itself.” The lawsuit names three defendants: Yan, the parent company and the subsidiary. It was filed in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court. TCP made a name for itself in the mid-1990s, when it became the first business to successfully commercialize the compact fluorescent lamp. It did so by making the coiled, energy efficient bulbs in China, where lower wages made it affordable to bend glass by hand. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange last year, raising $73 million.