NEW YORK (AP) – Fox News chief Roger Ailes is seeking to move former anchor Gretchen Carlson’s harassment case against him from a New Jersey court to a closed arbitration panel in New York.
Carlson, who left Fox last month, has accused Ailes of retaliating when she refused his sexual advances and complained about harassment in the workplace at the nation’s top cable news channel.
The charges compelled Twentieth Century Fox, the news network’s parent company, to launch an internal investigation. Meanwhile, other women have come forward to accuse the media executive of sexual misconduct in cases that predated Fox’s 1996 launch, and a succession of Fox personalities have publicly expressed support for their boss.
Ailes, in court papers filed Friday, said Carlson’s contract compelled her to submit to arbitration for employment disputes. His lawyer, Susan Estrich, said Carlson’s lawyers have led a “concerted smear campaign” against Ailes and, in court papers, said the motive is to convince Ailes to pay a large settlement to make the case go away.
“Her attempt to game the system so as to avoid the arbitration clause for her client’s baseless allegations is contrary to law and unsupported by the facts,” Estrich said.