Andy Cohen as soon as described the Actual Housewives franchise as “guilt free gossiping,” and now he, NBCUniversal, Warner Bros Discovery and others are denying any guilt within the office discrimination and retaliation claims from RHONY vet Leah McSweeney.
And, with the Structure as their major protect, it ain’t fairly.
“Whereas Plaintiff makes an attempt to overwhelm with a 754-paragraph criticism, even a cursory evaluate of her allegations reveals that many concern issues totally irrelevant to her claims and most are devoid of any factual or authorized help, speculative, deceptive, and/or demonstrably false,” declares a memorandum of legislation supporting Cohen’s Could 22 movement to toss out McSweeney’s medication, drink and discrimination claims of February 27.
Ready by Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp’s Christine Lepera, Jacaob Albertson and Adam Levin, the movement, which can also be of behalf of fellow defendants NBCU, WBD, Lisa Shannon, John Paparazzo, Darren Ward, Shed Media US Inc and Bravo Media, desires NYC-based U.S. District Decide Lewis J. Liman to set a date for listening to ASAP to see the matter tossed.
“Lots of Plaintiff’s claims, supported solely by essentially the most conclusory and threadbare allegations, must be dismissed as a matter of legislation,” the 32-page memo goes on to say of McSweeney’s considerably explosive swimsuit. “The remainder of Plaintiff’s claims must be dismissed as a result of they impermissibly search to abridge Defendants’ First Modification rights to tailor and alter the messages they want to convey of their inventive works, together with via forged choice and different inventive choices.”
Removed from the primary member of the Housewives multiverse to place Cohen and his conduct beneath the microscope, McSweeney’s lengthy anticipated swimsuit of earlier this 12 months actually had the excellence of pulling again the drapes on a number of the extra grubby facet of the profitable non-scripted enterprise. Weaving a story of a “rotted office tradition that uniquely relied on pressuring its staff to eat alcohol,” McSweeney and her Adelman-Matz attorneys go on to state that RH franchise EP Cohen “engages in cocaine use with Housewives and different Bravolebrities that he employs.” Moreover, the submitting claims that Cohen offers the “Housewives with whom he makes use of cocaine with extra favorable therapy and edits.”
Cohen, NBCU, WBD and the opposite defendants deal with these accusations straight on once more, kinda.
“Beneath well-settled legislation, even when Defendants did wish to use the Housewives franchise to characteristic inebriated forged members (which they don’t), that message—achieved via casting and directing choices—could be protected beneath the First Modification,” the memo accompanying the dismissal movement places forth with a straight face.
And let’s put that in context.
On Could 9, Bravo introduced that it had accomplished a 3rd party-run investigation on McSweeney’s claims and people of Brandi Glanville. That probe decided “the claims had been discovered to be unsubstantiated.” Conveniently, that very same day, simply earlier than the NBCU upfront within the Huge Apple, the Cohen hosted Watch What Occurs Subsequent Stay! was picked up till the top of 2025 and a bevy of RH collection had been renewed.
Each legal professionals for Glanville and McSweeney instantly referred to as BS, with the latter’s lawyer Gary Adelman telling Deadline: “How do you could have an investigation with out talking with to anybody?” He added, with scorn: “Our opinion is that nobody goes to consider this was an actual investigation.”
That scorn was evident once more immediately in response to the movement to dismiss submitting by Cohen and the opposite defendants.
“We don’t agree that the movement has benefit — it principally argues for dismissal on technical grounds primarily saying that Defendants had been allowed to discriminate in opposition to Ms. McSweeney — not that they didn’t do it,” Adelman-Matz co-founder Sarah Matz stated “To agree with the Defendants could be to primarily say that the inventive industries aren’t topic to anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation legal guidelines and that networks may have interaction in discrimination and retaliation with impunity, which isn’t the legislation.”
With a number of different accusations swirling round Cohen, Bravo and Actuality TV generally of late, we’ll see what Decide Liman says when a listening to is lastly held.
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