REAL-LIFE DRAMA
General counsel at Lions Gate, Wayne Levin, resigned in 2017 amid claims of sexual abuse,
Wayne Levin was the general counsel of Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. for 17 years, during which he helped it grow from a tiny independent studio to the Hollywood powerhouse behind “The Hunger Games” and “Mad Men.”
In November 2017, he disappeared with virtually no explanation. Lions Gate made no announcement save for a paragraph on the last page of an 89-page regulatory filing that month, which said he resigned “for health and personal reasons.”
Left unsaid was that Mr. Levin’s exit came amid a previously unreported legal drama involving a former subordinate, Wendy Jaffe, who in multiple interviews with The Wall Street Journal as well as in legal documents said she was mistreated by Mr. Levin for more than a decade.
She says the alleged abuse during a period from around 2002 to 2003 included nonconsensual sexual contact and that in subsequent years, Mr. Levin overworked her to the point that she developed health problems including blurred vision and when she discussed leaving, questioned her abilities.
“It was never really about sex, it was about controlling someone and asserting power and that continued even when the physical component stopped,” she said.
Ms. Jaffe’s accusations, made after she left Lions Gate in 2016, set off a series of contentious negotiations, resulting in two settlement agreements viewed by the Journal and one $2.5 million (U.S.) payment from Lions Gate to Ms. Jaffe. The Journal also viewed correspondence between attorneys for Lions Gate and Ms. Jaffe.
Mr. Levin’s attorney said Mr. Levin left Lions Gate for “personal and medical reasons,” and that he had been considering resigning before the allegations. People who worked with Mr. Levin confirmed he had health problems.
The attorney added that “Mr. Levin will not respond in the press to Ms. Jaffe’s allegations.” He did make available a series of email exchanges, including some in which Mr. Levin spoke highly of Ms. Jaffe’s work and nominated her for an award, and one from Ms. Jaffe to Mr. Levin from May 2016 in which she told him he was “a good man.”
Ms. Jaffe said she wrote nice things about Mr. Levin at times as a way to “get him to stop” his alleged mistreatment.
As part of the initial settlement in December 2016, Ms. Jaffe and Lions Gate agreed to keep the circumstances of her departure confidential. Ms. Jaffe says she believes Lions Gate violated the agreements in various ways, including by disparaging her to potential employers, and that the terms no longer apply.
“It’s complicated when the head of legal is the person who is hurting you,” said Ms. Jaffe, an attorney and former Lions Gate executive vice president of legal affairs.
In an April letter to Ms. Jaffe’s lawyer, a Lions Gate attorney said the company hasn’t violated the settlement and “strongly disagrees” with other assertions by Ms. Jaffe.
A Lions Gate spokesman declined to comment on details of Ms. Jaffe’s allegations against it and Mr. Levin, but said: “We take sexual harassment allegations very seriously, investigate them thoroughly and independently and take appropriate remedial action.” In November 2017, Lions Gate’s top executives encouraged Mr. Levin to resign, people close to the company said, in part because the nascent #metoo movement had made allegations of sexual misconduct more publicly damaging in Hollywood.
Ms. Jaffe, 46 years old, met Mr. Levin, 55, at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, where he was her instructor, and went to work for him upon graduation at a company Lions Gate acquired in 2000.
Soon after the 2000 acquisition, Ms. Jaffe told the Journal, Mr. Levin ordered her to come to his office and engage in “dehumanizing” sexual acts.
She said she interpreted the move as an attempt on his part to initiate an S&M-style relationship. In their final such encounter, in 2003, she said, he came to her apartment, where he then attempted to initiate a sexual act, before throwing her down and leaving while she was crying.
She agreed to some of his demands during that period out of “shame and fear,” she said.
Lions Gate was a small company at the time and Ms. Jaffe said she didn’t feel comfortable reporting the behavior of a top executive.
She said she didn’t attempt to stop the alleged mistreatment because she viewed Mr. Levin as a “father figure” and mentor. She also said departing a job she otherwise liked because of Mr. Levin’s behavior struck her as unjust.
Vicki Magley, an expert on industrial psychology at the University of Connecticut, said victims of sexual harassment often stay in abusive relationships with bosses in the hope that the behavior will stop rather than risk the fallout of a confrontation. These factors are exacerbated when the person has no previous employers to offer recommendations if they leave, she added.
By the time Ms. Jaffe left Lions Gate, in April 2016, she said, she had finally worked up the confidence to search for other positions.
Soon after she departed Lions Gate, Ms. Jaffe alleged the company improperly caused stock options of hers that had fully vested to expire in an attempt to harass her — a charge Lions Gate executives denied in emails to her attorney at the time. In the course of the legal back-and-forth that followed, Ms. Jaffe’s attorneys brought up her allegations of sexual misconduct more than a decade earlier, which she hadn’t previously aired.
During settlement discussions later in 2016, Ms. Jaffe told Chief Executive Jon Feltheimer directly about her accusations for the first time, including that Mr. Levin spanked her, groped her, asked her to negoti- ate her employment contract while sitting on his lap and said he wanted to offer her to friends as a sexual gift.
The CEO expressed surprise, according to Ms. Jaffe. Mr. Feltheimer declined to comment.
Lions Gate hired an outside investigator to look into the matter but Ms. Jaffe declined to cooperate because, she said, she believed it wasn’t being conducted seriously and wasn’t sufficiently independent.
According to Mr. Levin’s attorney, Lions Gate’s head of human resources told Mr. Levin that since Ms. Jaffe didn’t cooperate, the investigator couldn’t corroborate her allegations.
The outside investigator was overseen by a Lions Gate attorney who typically co-reported to the head of human resources and Mr. Levin, the latter of whom wasn’t involved in the investigation, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The head of human resources at Lions Gate declined to comment.
Experts in sexual-harassment law contacted by the Journal said the best practice in such a situation would be for an investigator to report directly to the board or the CEO to ensure maximum independence.
As part of the December 2016 settlement, Lions Gate executives agreed to speak positively about Ms. Jaffe to potential employers, the document shows. However, she alleged, Mr. Levin and other executives disparaged her abilities to potential employers in the Hollywood legal community and said she had extorted the company.
An amended settlement in March 2017 included an agreement for Mr. Feltheimer to write a letter, backdated to April 2016, describing her as a “gifted and hardworking attorney.”
But the disparaging comments continued, Ms. Jaffe alleged in letters from her attorney to Lions Gate.
A Lions Gate attorney said in response that “Ms. Jaffe’s claim of disparagement is wholly unfounded.”
Mr. Levin’s attorney said his client agreed to forgo an anticipated $1 million bonus he was owed for work on a major acquisition in 2016 in order to enable Ms. Jaffe’s settlement. The company hasn’t publicly disclosed why Mr. Levin was the only top executive not to receive such a bonus.
Ms. Jaffe said she was angry when she discovered some of the money came from Mr. Levin, saying she didn’t want him to think he could make up for the alleged mistreatment by paying her.
Ms. Jaffe said she has attempted to return the money to Mr. Levin and that after he initially indicated he wouldn’t accept one of her checks, she took the unusual step of sending him around $20,000 in $1 bills.
Mr. Levin’s attorney said he hasn’t spent money given to him by Ms. Jaffe and wants to return it.
According to Mr. Levin’s publicly filed employment contract, the company wasn’t obligated to pay him any severance for a voluntary resignation. Nonetheless, when Mr. Levin resigned, Lions Gate said that for the remaining 28 months of his contract, it would pay half of his $900,000 base salary, as well as a significant portion of the equity he would have received had he stayed.
Mr. Levin’s attorney said his client believes the amount of his severance “was consistent with his employment agreement if terminated without cause or by him for good reason.”
Jaffe claims Levin spanked her, groped her, asked her to sit on his lap and wanted to offer her to friends as a sexual gift