CBS SETTLES BIAS SUIT
Judge slams net’s news division for ‘shocking’ legal tactics
Two CBS News bosses who were quick with their delete keys prodded the network to settle a sex discrimination case by a woman who complained that one of them advised her to sleep with a colleague.
Erin Gee, a former associate director on “CBS Evening News,” said in her suit that CBS News executive director Rob Klug told her in 2011 that she should “have sex” with a colleague to “break the ice.”
Klug, 58, also allegedly asked a male supervisor if he “had had sex with (Gee) or the other women under his supervision,” her suit charged.
Gee, 44, cited the boorish comments as evidence that Klug and the director of “CBS Evening News,” TJ Asprea, had discriminated against her in 2015 by deciding to train a less-qualified man to become a director.
Gee said in her suit that she told Asprea and Klug in January 2015 that she thought she’d been passed over due to sexism. After Gee complained, she was demoted.
Some of the evidence Gee needed in her discrimination case later disappeared. Klug and Asprea, 43, deleted their emails from around the time of Gee’s demotion.
Klug said in a deposition that for years, he’d routinely deleted emails he no longer needed. He also said “I don’t recall” nine times in response to questions about a meeting between him, Asprea and Gee.
Asprea also said he regularly deleted emails.
“Personally I would delete emails when there was no more room in the email,” he said in a deposition.
The network’s legal team failed to send the newsmen a legal notice ordering them to preserve emails — a move that Magistrate Judge Sarah Netburn called “unfathomable.”
“I find the conduct of CBS here to be shocking, I really do. It is hard to draw any other conclusion than that they were trying avoid producing and saving those emails,” Netburn said in a May 22 hearing in Manhattan Federal Court. “It is really hard for me to come up with any other rational conclusion.”
The judge was outraged because Klug and Asprea were two of only three people interviewed by CBS human resources staff about Gee’s allegations. Yet the men didn’t receive a notice to preserve their emails, which is called a “litigation hold.”
CBS lawyer Blair Robinson called the failure to put Asprea and Klug on notice about their emails “an inadvertent omission” by CBS’s legal department.
“Honestly, your best answer is it was a mistake,” Netburn said.
“That is the answer, your honor,” Robinson replied.
“I just gave you that answer,” Netburn fired back. “Let’s be candid here, sir. It’s not as if they excluded somebody on the periphery. They excluded from the hold the very people interviewed.”
CBS settled the case late last month for an undisclosed amount. Gee’s attorney, Kevin Mintzer, declined to comment.
Gee finally left the network in October 2017 for a new job.
Asprea declined comment. His LinkedIn profile indicates he left “CBS Evening News” last year. Klug did not return a voicemail. CBS and Robinson did not respond to requests for comment.
The network previously denied wrongdoing and said Gee was not discriminated or retaliated against.
Gee filed her suit in November 2017, only days after CBS News’ most prominent on-air personality, Charlie Rose, was accused of sexual harassment.
CBS News President David Rhodes told staff in an email at the time that Rose was fired for “extremely disturbing and intolerable behavior.”
“I’ve often heard that things used to be different,” he wrote. “And no one may be able to correct the past. But what may once have been accepted should not ever have been acceptable.”