Lawyers for the Fox News chairman, Roger Ailes, are looking to transfer a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by the former anchor Gretchen Carlson to a New York federal court, a move her lawyers immediately dismissed as “judge shopping.”
In papers filed on Friday, Mr. Ailes’s lawyers argued that the case should be heard in federal court in Manhattan — rather than the New Jersey federal court that it was moved to last week — and that the matter should be resolved in arbitration, a change that would effectively shield the proceedings from public scrutiny.
Minutes later, Ms. Carlson’s lawyers issued their own brief, rejecting the contention by Mr. Ailes’s team that arbitration was required.
It was the second Friday in a row marked by a skirmish between the sides in a case that has transfixed the television world and raised questions about the future of Mr. Ailes, a towering newsman who has long been a figure of controversy and fascination.
This latest round of legal maneuvers hinges on the arbitration clause in Ms. Carlson’s contract. Mr. Ailes’s representatives contend that the clause requires that any workplace dispute be resolved in a New York-based arbitration.
Ms. Carlson’s team, in its brief, said that the anchor is not claiming a breach of contract, since she named Mr. Ailes as the sole defendant, and did not name her employer, Fox News.
On Friday, one of Mr. Ailes’s lawyers, Susan Estrich, said that Ms. Carlson was trying to circumvent the arbitration clause by initially filing her suit in New Jersey Superior Court. (To do so, Ms. Carlson’s team cited Mr. Ailes’s ownership of a home in New Jersey.) Ms. Estrich said the case should be heard in Manhattan federal court, because Fox News is based in Manhattan; Mr. Ailes primarily resides in New York; and Ms. Carlson, a resident of Connecticut, is accusing Mr. Ailes of violating New York City’s Human Rights Law. Last Friday, Mr. Ailes’s lawyers argued that the case should be moved to federal court and submitted for arbitration.
There could be another reason for the request. Thomas F. Doherty, a partner in the labor practice of the New Jersey law firm McCarter & English, said that a New Jersey court “may lack the authority to compel arbitration in New York.” Mr. Ailes, he explained, would need to transfer the case to pursue an arbitration in New York, which is where Ms. Carlson’s contract stipulates any arbitration case would have to take place.
A lawyer for Ms. Carlson, Nancy Erika Smith, called Mr. Ailes’s move on Friday “illegal, unprofessional and unethical.”
“You don’t get to judge-shop in the United States of America,” she said.
In response, Irena Briganti, a Fox News spokeswoman, said: “We’re trying to get this to the court where it belongs. If anything, Gretchen Carlson’s lawyer was attempting to judge-shop by having this heard in her comfort zone of state court in Bergen County, where neither Roger nor Carlson reside.”
Last Wednesday, Ms. Carlson, 50, filed a suit in which she argued that she was fired from her weekday afternoon show on Fox News after rebuffing sexual advances from Mr. Ailes, 76. She also said she had been sexually harassed at Fox News. Her description of sexual harassment and retaliation on the part of Mr. Ailes has been followed by accounts of other women who say Mr. Ailes acted inappropriately in professional settings. But a multitude of Fox anchors and on-air personalities have also spoken in support of Mr. Ailes, saying that Ms. Carlson’s ratings had fallen and that she was upset about being let go by the network.
Mr. Ailes has denied all the charges.
Earlier this week, Ms. Carlson said in an interview with The New York Times that by filing the suit she “finally felt it was time to stand up” for herself.
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