O'Reilly, Fox Face Breach of Contract Claims Over Outing of Accuser
A woman claims the cable news company and its former host breached their settlement agreement by making false, defamatory statements after a New York Times story identified her as one of Bill O'Reilly's harassment accusers.
December 04, 2017 at 03:14 PM
3 minute read
A woman who settled a harassment complaint against former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly alleges in a new suit that he and the network breached their nondisparagement and confidentiality agreements after she was outed in a New York Times story about claims against O'Reilly.
Rachel Witlieb Bernstein claims in her U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York suit Bernstein v. O'Reilly, 17-cv-09483, that she was not the source of information for the April 1 story that appeared in the Times. In it, Bernstein was personally identified as a “young producer” who, in 2002, was allegedly verbally assaulted by O'Reilly in the Fox newsroom.
The amount of the payout was not disclosed, though the story notes that the network paid five women about $13 million to forego litigation over O'Reilly's behavior. According to the Times, Bernstein's suit did not, unlike some of the other claims against O'Reilly, involve sexual harassment. She entered into an agreement with the cable news channel and O'Reilly in July 2002.
Subsequent statements by O'Reilly are alleged to have violated the nondisparagement clause, according to Bernstein.
In the same April 1 story, O'Reilly was quoted as stating that he was “vulnerable to lawsuits from individuals who want me to pay them to avoid negative publicity,” and that the “worst part of [his] job is being a target for those would harm me and my employer.” Fox News also released a statement in response to the April 1 story, reiterating a claim by O'Reilly that “no one has ever filed a complaint about me” with the company's human resources department. Both O'Reilly and Fox said that a hotline was in place to anonymously report complaints and that no one had ever called it to complain about O'Reilly.
According to the complaint, Bernstein repeatedly complained to Fox's HR department as well as executives at the company about O'Reilly's “mistreatment” and that “both defendant Fox News … and O'Reilly knew that before making the statements above.” She added that no harassment hotline, in fact, existed while she was at the company.
The defendants breached their agreement by making statements other than the agreed-upon statement that were false and defamatory, Bernstein alleges.
“This cynical falsehood about a non-existent hotline was made to bolster O'Reilly's claim that the women who received settlements must have fabricated their claims or they would have complained,” said Smith Mullin name attorney Nancy Smith, Bernstein's counsel. “But Ms. Bernstein did complain. There is ample evidence that Fox News, with the complicity of top executives, enabled the abuse of women for many years then silenced them with non-disclosure agreements and non-disparagement clauses.”
A spokeswoman for Fox News declined to comment.
O'Reilly could not be reached for comment, and defense counsel in the case could not be immediately ascertained.
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