A judge in the Southern District of New York dismissed a lawsuit against Fox News filed by a former on-air host, Andrea Tantaros, after the judge issued a blistering ruling.
Tantaros filed suit in in April 2017 alleging that Fox News’s founding chairman, Roger Ailes, sexually harassed her, surreptitiously had a close-circuit TV system record female Fox employees as they changed on the premises, hacked her and had hacked into her Gmail account and her Blackberry.
She also claimed that Ailes and the network’s executives retaliated against her after she complained about being sexually harassed by scheming to create fake social media accounts, known as “sock puppets,” that defamed her online.
In dismissing the suit, U.S. District Court Judge George B. Daniels ruling was brutal on Friday. The judge shredded Tantaros’ case for lacking evidence and “factual support”, concluding her allegations were “based primarily on speculation and conjecture,” noting Tantaros “fails to adequately make out the basic elements of her claims.”
“For the reasons already stated, vague, speculative, and conclusory allegations concerning malware allegedly found on Plaintiff’s personal computer and Fox News’s purported ability to access or monitor communications on Plaintiff’s Blackberry are insufficient to state such a claim. With respect to her Gmail account, Plaintiff believes that ‘someone’ accessed her account without authorization, but she doesn’t allege which of the Defendants, if any, actually did so.”
Daniels also challenged Tantaros on her claim that hidden cameras had been used by the network, capturing images of female Fox employees as they changed clothes.
“Plaintiff pleads no facts to support this belief, much less ones to make her unsubstantiated allegations rise ‘above the speculative level.’”
“For the reasons already stated, vague, speculative, and conculsory allegations concerning malware allegedly found on Plaintiff’s personal computer and Fox News’s purported ability to access or monitor communications on Plaintiff’s Blackberry are insufficient to state such a claim,” he wrote. “With respect to her Gmail account, Plaintiff believes that ‘someone’ accessed her account without authorization, but she doesn’t allege which of the Defendants, if any, actually did so.”
Daniels also dismantled the claim that Ailes had Tantaros recorded through hidden cameras, saying the “Plaintiff pleads no facts to support this belief, much less ones to make her unsubstantiated allegations rise ‘above the speculative level.’”
Denying Tantaros’s allegations in that lawsuit, Fox News maintained that the host was let go for not receiving network approval for a book she wrote, titled “Tied Up in Knots: How Getting What We Wanted Made Women Miserable,” violating a major part of her contract.
Tantaros represented herself in the matter and has not issued a public statement since receiving the ruling.
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