Andrea Tantaros

It was 10:30 in the morning on Thursday when top litigators including Gibson Dunn & Crutcher's Randy Mastro; Dechert's Andrew Levander; Thompson & Knight's Marion Bachrach and Morgan Lewis & Bockius' Christopher Parlo assembled in the Foley Square courtroom of U.S. District Judge George Daniels in Manhattan.

The topic: motions for sanctions in a high-profile suit against Fox News by former host Andrea Tantaros.

Almost eight hours later, they were still there. Daniels finally shut it down at 6 pm without making a decision—underscoring what a hornet's nest of case this is.

As Parlo wrote to the judge on Nov. 29, “Respectfully, in my nearly 30 years of practice I have never seen a group of lawyers so quick to threaten sanctions against other members of the bar or who would try to use our response to such threats to seek an advantage with this court in other pending motions (and all without giving the court the full background and context).”

Whoa, not so fast there.

“[W]e recognize and appreciate that sanctions are reserved for the most egregious abuses,” Mastro wrote on Sept. 1, before Parlo was hired.  “We respectfully submit that this is such a circumstance. There must be a consequence for counsel who lie, bully, and threaten innocent parties to try to extort millions of dollars from them under peril of adverse publicity damaging to their personal reputations.”

Pull up a chair—this fight is juicy.

The Plot of a Television Drama?

It dates back to 2016, when Tantaros, who co-hosted the show “Outnumbered,” sued Fox News and its ex-chairman Roger Ailes for sexual harassment and retaliation. The suit was filed a month after Gretchen Carlson's— back when allegations that Fox “operated like a sex-fueled, Playboy Mansion-like cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency, and misogyny” were still shocking.

So one problem. In her contract wit Fox, Tantaros agreed to arbitrate employment disputes. In February 2017, New York Supreme Court Justice David B. Cohen ruled the agreement was valid and binding.

But what plaintiff wants to arbitrate if you can figure out a way to sue in federal court instead?

Two months later, Tantaros and her then-lawyer Judd Burstein filed a new suit in the Southern District of New York against Fox et al, but also added social media pioneer Peter Snyder and his company Disrupter Inc.

Tantaros alleged the new defendants were in cahoots with Fox to conduct illegal electronic surveillance and hack her computer. Their intent was to “intimidate, terrorize and crush her career through an endless stream of lewd, offensive and career-damaging social media posts,” she alleged.

To say the allegations were not well-received is an understatement.

On behalf of Fox, Levander and the Dechert team promptly filed a motion for sanctions.

“The allegations of the complaint read like the plot of a television drama,” Levander wrote. “But pleadings in federal court are not supposed to be works of fiction; they must be grounded in fact. The allegations in the complaint are not just false, they are outrageously and flagrantly so.”

Levander argued that Burstein either knew the allegations were an outright hoax, or that he failed to fulfill his basic professional obligation to investigate his client's claims. Either way, he and Tantaros should be sanctioned, Levander said.

Bachrach of Thompson & Knight, who represents Fox News former co-president William Shine, piled on too, arguing that Tantaros' complaint “appears to have been filed for the improper twin purpose of avoiding arbitration and courting exposure in the media.”

On behalf of Snyder and Disrupter, Mastro of Gibson Dunn cranked the level of outrage up to 11. He argued that his clients have nothing whatsoever to do with the matter. The so-called sock-puppet Twitter account that Tantaros said is tormenting her belongs to a real person, Daniel Wayne Block. In a sworn statement, Block said he posted all the tweets about Tantaros on his own, that he's never even met anyone who works for Fox and doesn't know Synder or Disrupter.

“[U]pon even rudimentary due diligence, it becomes abundantly clear that Ms. Tantaros's page-turner about alleged wiretapping and 'sock puppet' Twitter accounts targeting her on Fox News's behalf is a tall tale too good to be true, because it isn't true at all,” Mastro wrote.

Burstein, who runs his own five-lawyer litigation boutique and whose website lists clients including boxer Oscar de La Hoya, the music group The Backstreet Boys and talk show host Sally Jessy Raphael, responded that the defendants are wrong about the merits, and that the allegations are not frivolous.

“It would have a chilling effect upon plaintiffs generally for federal courts to impose Rule 11 sanctions whenever a defendant feels aggrieved by a lawsuit, which is essentially 100 percent of the time,” he wrote. And he called the defense tactics “abusive” and “a cheap shot.”

On Sept. 22, Burstein withdrew as Tantaros' lawyer based on “an irretrievable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship.”

Tantaros replaced him with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius—which meant firm lawyers including Parlo and partner Martha Stolley got the unenviable job of parachuting into this mess.

Opposing counsel are not cutting them any slack. Parlo in a Nov. 29 letter complained to the judge that “we have been threatened with sanctions or other actions no fewer than five times, and recently with increasing ferocity—all in response to our anodyne statement that we are carefully evaluating all of the allegations and that, when we have finished that process, as required by our ethical obligations, we will amend the complaint, if necessary, or take whatever other steps lawyers are required to take.”

At the hearing on Thursday, the judge focused much of his questioning on Burstein. In response to a request for comment, Burstein in an email said only that “The judge heard a great deal of argument and decided not to rule.”

Stay tuned—there's another hearing scheduled for March 1.