Judge Dismisses All Charges Against Fox News in Jennifer Eckhart-Ed Henry Case
Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via AP
A federal judge ruled in favor of Fox News’ motion for summary judgment to dismiss Jennifer Eckhart’s 2020 claims against the cable news network regarding allegations of sexual assault and an unsafe work environment.
A Fox News spokesperson told Mediaite, “We are pleased with the court’s decision.”
Eckhart alleged in the lawsuit that she was violently raped by former Fox News anchor Ed Henry and sued both Henry and Fox News, claiming they failed to properly investigate Henry’s behavior.
Judge Ronnie Abrams (disclosure: sister to Mediaite owner and founder Dan Abrams) granted Fox’s motion for summary judgment “in its entirety.”
She also granted Henry’s motion for summary judgment regarding Eckhart’s revenge porn claims, but allowed her claims for “gender-motivated violence, assault, battery, sex trafficking and harassment” to move forward.
A legal filing from attorneys representing Eckhart reported by Mediaite’s Diana Falzone and Sarah Rumpf in November added new allegations against Henry and Fox News:
Eckhart sued Fox News and former host Ed Henry in 2020 over her claim that Henry had violently raped her in 2017. Henry has vehemently denied the accusations. Fox News said they fired Henry directly after learning of Eckhart’s claims. In a previous statement, the network said, “Upon first learning of Jennifer Eckhart’s allegations in 2020, Fox News promptly conducted an investigation by an outside independent law firm, which resulted in senior management and HR terminating Ed Henry within six days.” Eckhart has contested both of their accounts in the past.
On Wednesday, Eckhart’s legal counsel Michael J. Willemin, a partner at Wigdor LLP, filed a 39-page motion that Mediaite has obtained. The legal brief opposing Fox’s motion for summary judgment detailed shocking new claims that Henry also assaulted another Fox News female colleague during his tenure at the network and multiple Fox News staffers alerted company brass to their concerns about him, along with other previously unreported allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment at Fox News by other male employees still employed by the network.
Fox News claimed in its summary judgment filing, which was made in September, that they handled the news of Henry’s behavior with alacrity and presented a timeline that runs counter to Willemin’s claims it ignored any misbehavior. Further, in a deposition under oath, Eckhart admitted that she did not go to Fox News about any allegations regarding Henry until two weeks after she had been dismissed from the network.
A key issue in this legal proceeding is what the network knew and when. Fox News insists that the evidence shows that they were not aware of any sexual interactions between the two employees. And when they became aware, they acted swiftly — firing Henry six days later.
All parties agreed that there were three sexual encounters between Henry and Eckhart. The last encounter occurred on Feb. 27, and neither Henry nor Eckhart told anyone at the network. Fox did learn of an April 17 consensual affair between Henry and another employee who wanted to alert management about it. Fox News insists that all allegations were investigated but not substantiated.
The preliminary statement in Fox News’s motion for summary judgment encapsulates the network’s position on the matter:
Eckhart admits that she told no one at FNN about Henry’s alleged misconduct either at the time it was happening or during the entire time she worked at FNN. Rather, Eckhart raised these allegations with FNN for the first time through her lawyers on June 25, 2020—three years after the alleged harassment ended, and two weeks after Eckhart was terminated by FNN for longstanding, unremedied performance failures. Even though Eckhart was no longer employed by FNN, upon hearing of Ms. Eckhart’s allegations, FNN President Jay Wallace and Executive Vice President of Human Resources Kevin Lord suspended Henry that very day, took him off the air, and immediately hired an independent law firm to investigate. Notably, during that investigation Eckhart refused to disclose her communications with Henry—communications that, as FNN learned in discovery, contained numerous sexually provocative messages and intimate photographs that Eckhart sent to Henry and that she conspicuously omitted from her Complaint. FNN’s outside investigator issued findings, and Wallace and Lord fired Henry for his admitted violations of workplace policy six days after FNN first received Eckhart’s complaint. On the same day as Henry’s termination, Wallace and FNN CEO Suzanne Scott informed all employees that FNN had received a complaint of sexual misconduct against Henry, investigated, and fired him—and reminded everyone that FNN prohibits all forms of sexual harassment, misconduct, and discrimination.
The summary judgment filing also laid out what the network deemed to be Eckhart’s “substantial performance deficiencies” as an Associate Producer at Fox Business as a pretext for her review, “performance improvement plan,” and eventual dismissal from the network, all before she made anyone at Fox aware of any interactions with Henry. Willemin countered by arguing, “the record is replete with disputes about whether Ms. Eckhart’s performance was, in fact, poor.”
Fox News terminated Eckhart’s employment on June 12, 2020. On June 25, 2020, two weeks after her termination, her attorney communicated, for the first time, the allegation that Henry had sexually harassed Eckhart. The Fox News request for summary judgment claimed “Eckhart alleges that Henry’s improper conduct began in or around 2014 and culminated in her alleged rape in February 2017. Nevertheless, during the entire course of her employment at FNN, Eckhart never once complained that she had been sexually harassed by Henry—or raised any concerns about Henry at all—despite having ample opportunity to do so.”
Abrams judgement included the following:
As a threshold matter, there is no direct evidence that Fox News was aware of Henry’s alleged harassment of Eckhart before it occurred. Eckhart acknowledges that she did not tell anyone at the network about their relationship until after she was terminated in mid-2020. See Eckhart Rule 56.1 Stmt. to Fox ¶ 150. Nor is there any indication that Henry revealed their relationship to others, or that Fox News management or HR otherwise learned about it.
Attempting to plug this evidentiary gap, Eckhart asserts that Fox News knew that Henry was harassing other women at the network, which put it on notice that he might do the same (or Case 1:20-cv-05593-RA-GWG Document 472 Filed 03/12/25 Page 38 of 50 39 worse) to her. She points to several pieces of evidence in support of that theory, including that Fox News knew about Henry’s extramarital affairs, that women came forward with accusations against him in April 2017 and that Fox News sent him to sex rehabilitation treatment in May 2016…No reasonable jury could find Fox News liable based on that evidence. For starters, even though Fox News eventually learned about Henry’s extramarital affairs, it did not know about many of them until after Eckhart and Henry’s final sexual encounter in 2017…..Because there is no evidence that Fox News learned about these affairs until April 2017 or later, no reasonable jury could find that they put it on notice that Henry would assault her.
Fox News did not have actual notice of Henry’s alleged misconduct towards her until she first reported it to the network through her counsel on June 25, 2020—three years after their last sexual encounter. Eckhart Rule 56.1 Stmt. to Fox ¶ 151. Once the network finally learned of his behavior, its response was the opposite of forgiveness: it swiftly investigated and terminated him just six days later. Id. ¶ 174. Because no reasonable jury could find on this record that Fox News condoned Henry’s behavior toward Eckhart after learning of it, summary judgment is granted as to this claim.
At bottom, no reasonable juror could conclude that Eckhart engaged in protected activity when she complained of a toxic environment at the February 10, 2020 meeting, or that such a complaint was causally tied to her placement on a PIP or later termination. These deficiencies alone foreclose Eckhart’s claim.
Nothing indicates that Eckhart’s performance issues were “fabricated or exaggerated,” despite Eckhart’s claim to the contrary. Eckhart Opp. to Fox at 33. Because Eckhart offers nothing indicating pretext, her claim also fails at the third step of the McDonnell-Douglas framework.
Finally, Fox News moves for summary judgment on Eckhart’s common-law claim that Fox News negligently supervised, retained and disciplined Henry. It argues that this claim is categorically barred by the New York Workers’ Compensation Law, which supplies the exclusively remedy for damages allegedly caused by the negligence of an employer. Fox News Br. at 33. The Court agrees. As the New York Workers’ Compensation Law states, “[t]he right to compensation or benefits under this chapter, shall be the exclusive remedy to an employee . . . when such employee is injured or killed by the negligence or wrong of another in the same employ.” ….Eckhart conceded this point at oral argument and advanced no argument that could save this claim. The Court thus grants Fox News’ motion for summary judgment on this claim.
Read the full judgment here.
