You don’t know for sure what the “allegations” are, but according to reports, it’s that he committed sexual assaults.
They are absolutely entitled to fire him if they have convincing evidence he committed a number of sexual assaults. They do not have to prove it to the level expected of a court of law; they just have to have the weight of the evidence that it did. He is a public figure, employed by a media company, and a record of disgraceful personal behaviour of an offensive nature could damage his employer. They can fire him for EXACTLY the same reason the Baltimore Ravens fired Ray Rice, or Penn State fired Joe Paterno.
Basically a summary of what’s been discussed with one notable exception: it states that he was terminated by the CBC suddenly and without warning based on their concerns about his BDSM lifestyle. I didn’t see any mention of the claims of office sexual harassment, nor did I see mention of claims that he was striking women with open hand and closed fist without their consent.
IANALawyer; no clue where this might go. I was assuming that they learned something new about either in-office harassment or non-consensual physical violence and fired him right then. That is not how this document seems to be portraying it - he is claiming he is the one who came to the CBC once he heard a reporter was looking into his sex life, and cooperated every step of the way, then Boom, fired. Maybe I missed something, or this is his attempt to frame the situation in the legal documentation.
Either way, it does seem like the CBC is going to have to assert what changed that led to the firing, or that his portrayal of the months leading up to the firing are inaccurate.
According to this site, his salary was in the $60k to 77k range (Canadian ). Unless he uses it to promote his side work (music and writing and etc.) that seems incredibly low; I’ve known librarians at small universities who earned more.
Thanks for posting that - I looked it over, and I don’t think he has a good case for the damages he is seeking - though I await the statement of defense.
(1) His claim, boiled down, is that they fired him even though they were satisfied the abuse claims against him were false - merely because they were afraid his consentual BDSM activities would leak out; and in doing so they misused the confidential info he gave them in order to clear himself of his abuse claims. Moreover, they defamed him, because his public notice of termination implied he committed wrongdoing.
I don’t think any of that stands up well. He may have a claim for wrongful termination - but not for the claims he is making. After all, given that several women were complaining about him, it isn’t as if his employer needed his “confidential information” to determine that he was involved in BDSM; and as for “defamation”, the public statements his employer made could not be less “innuendo filled”.
Edit: forgot he was a unionized employee - all he gets is grievance.
The fact that the statement of claim starts off with the Trudeau quote a million doofuses have defended him with - and which, of course, is a total non sequitur that has absolutely nothing to do with the case - tells us a lot.
It is in fact unclear that this lawsuit can make it to court at all, since CBC can simply point out Ghomeshi has to grieve through his union, and cannot do an end-around the collective agreement he is a part of. His lawsuit and its gigantic, preposterous sum is a pure PR move.
Having said that, CBC really needs to respond in public if they possibly can.
Did anybody else find his facebook statement a bit TMI?
He could easily have said that some allegations were made about his sex-life that he did not feel the need to answer other than to say he has not done anything that was non-consensual and that it doesn’t have anything to do with his work and is nobody’s business beyond that. Instead he specifically stated it was BDSM, even referencing Fifty Shades, almost as if proud of being freaky deaky and stopping just short of saying “Oh, and this one time I got this woman with a big butt and I took an extension chord and put on a sailor hat and some rubber boots and…[etc.]”. I wondered if he sought the advice of a PR person or counsel before doing that.
I found it TMI, but I think it’s a somewhat typical approach – if you get everything out there yourself, it takes the punch out of what other parties might reveal about you. I think it is pretty likely he’s being advised in a strategic way about how to handle this (whether or not I agree with the strategy, I think it’s very intentional).
Musician Owen Pallett, a self-proclaimed friend of Ghomeshi,has something to say, for those of you who have Facebook. I don’t know if I’m allowed to quote it here, or part of it, so I’ll just post the link.
I’m not trying to smear anyone, just hoping that whatever the truth is will eventually be found out.
I was very confused by this guy’s statement. Is he claiming to have some knowledge or insight that the violence that allegedly occurred actually occurred? When did this knowledge come to him? It’s a very weird piece.
This news story is really bringing out the crazy! So far we’ve got:
A creepy d-bag, glorified DJ with artistic pretensions
Earnest spokespeople for the “BDSM community” (snort)
The usual brigade of loser males who form a human chain around anyone who might be a creep to women
If you thought Rob Ford made Canada look bad - looks like things were just getting started…
I wonder if the accuser mentioned his FB post kept dating him after the alleged abuse began. Or any of the other alleged accusers for that matter.
If they did then it would do much to discredit them; if they didn’t it would add much validity.
I think that’s true, but I don’t know if it’s valid.
I agree that it’s an accurate prediction for how the public in general would perceive these accusations.
But I don’t necessary believe that it’s right. Victims often stay with abusers, for a whole host of reasons. It shouldn’t impact the assessment of whether his actions were criminally violent.