March 28, 2024

Leading the Legal War Against Fox

“If Doug thinks he’s at war,” the statement said, “why does he contact us every two weeks asking for millions (40 percent for him) in exchange for peace?”

Television viewers have long been familiar with Fox’s public product, but for more than a decade, there have also been persistent glimpses of its private culture as numerous women have come forward accusing men like Mr. Ailes — or the host Eric Bolling, who was ousted this month after sending lewd text messages to female colleagues — of predatory sexual misconduct. As Mr. Ailes did before he died in May, Mr. Bolling has denied the allegations.

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The accusations by Mr. Wigdor’s clients — former news anchors, former news analysts, former accounting department employees — have only deepened the portrait of a toxic culture. One of the people he represents, a regular guest political commentator, says the network retaliated against her after she lodged a rape claim against a Fox Business host. Another, a Bangladeshi payroll worker, says a colleague once referred to him as a “terrorist.” In lawsuits that run to nearly 300 pages, there are charges that the network fired a freelance reporter at Fox 5 News, its New York affiliate, after she became pregnant; that Fox’s former comptroller repeatedly ridiculed black and Hispanic colleagues; and that some Fox journalists conspired with the White House to produce fake news.

The network has denied these charges and in each of the cases has promised to “vigorously defend” itself. On Monday night, it filed a motion to dismiss the fake news suit, calling it “without merit and legally insufficient.” Two days later, one of the defendants in the suit asked a court to professionally sanction Mr. Wigdor for having whipped up a media frenzy over what he claimed was a “false narrative.” Using the media is one of his favorite tactics, and he has on occasion included details in his complaints — about his defendants’ sex lives, for example — that are sensational and embarrassing but not necessarily legally relevant.

At 48, Mr. Wigdor has found himself as the courtroom general leading an army of Fox complainants largely because of his reputation as one of New York City’s most aggressive employment lawyers. During his career, he has filed gender discrimination suits against Deutsche Bank and Citigroup (both of which, like many of his lawsuits, were settled without a claim of liability), and an age and racial bias suit against The New York Times. In June, he sued Uber, alleging that officials at the company illegally sought the medical records of a woman who claimed she was raped by an Uber driver in India. (An Uber spokesman has apologized that the plaintiff had to “relive” the experience.) And in 2013, after he sued SoulCycle, charging that the indoor cycling studio had cheated an instructor out of his wages, the company banned him from all of its locations. So he sued over that, too, and lost.

But despite the fact that he has repeatedly taken on corporate giants, Fox may be his toughest target yet. In February, the network fired Judith Slater, the former comptroller, who is accused of racial animus by many of his clients. The network since maintained that Mr. Wigdor’s lawsuit naming Ms. Slater was “needless” and that his follow-up amended suits were “copycat complaints.” In April, days before one of those amended suits was filed, Mr. Wigdor said that Fox’s lawyers threatened to “seek sanctions” against him if his new plaintiffs went public with their claims. (A lawyer for Ms. Slater said that Mr. Wigdor’s claims against her “rely on false allegations” and were nothing more than a “money grab.”)

The threats have not just come from Fox itself. This spring, Mr. Wigdor held a televised news conference in which he announced additional plaintiffs in an expanding racial bias suit against Fox. Minutes after the event was aired, the police said a man called his office threatening to blow it up. When the man called back, Mr. Wigdor got on the phone with him. Mr. Wigdor said the man called him a “nigger lover,” adding he was going to kill him and his family. Mr. Wigdor called the police, who eventually identified the caller as Joseph Amico, a computer repairman from Las Vegas.

Within three weeks, two New York detectives had traveled to Las Vegas to arrest Mr. Amico, but a standoff ensued when he refused to leave his home. After several hours, a local SWAT team broke into the house and found Mr. Amico in the attic.

Mr. Amico’s lawyer, Todd Spodek, said his client would fight the charges. “In this political climate,” Mr. Spodek said, “people are so worked up about the issues that it’s very easy for words to be misunderstood and hysteria to take place.”

Slim and sinewy, with a disarmingly focused gaze, Mr. Wigdor says he has always had a passion for competition. He is a regular tennis player (and claims that while in law school he gave lessons to Alan Greenspan, a future chairman of the Federal Reserve). He bikes each day from his home in Forest Hills, Queens, to his law firm on lower Fifth Avenue. While working on a master’s degree at Oxford University, where he met his wife Catherine, he played starting point guard on its 1995 national champion basketball team.

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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/nyregion/douglas-wigdor-fox-news.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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