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Industry Workplace Misconduct Investigations

By Carri H. Cohen, Janie F. Schulman and Joshua Hill
April 01, 2018

The important ongoing industry and national conversation about sexual harassment is serving as a wake-up call to entertainment companies, board members and C-suite executives about the need to be proactive when confronted with allegations of harassment or other workplace misconduct.

It is now abundantly clear that not taking workplace misconduct issues seriously or failing to ask the rights questions can be very damaging, and possibly fatal, for a company. Exhibit A for the entertainment industry is The Weinstein Company, the studio co-founded by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. The allegations against Weinstein of systemic sexual abuse of dozens of women for decades brought the company to its knees, forcing it into bankruptcy. In addition, the company faced several lawsuits from Weinstein's accusers.

One of the lawsuits named members of the board of directors, alleging they knew or should have known that Weinstein was “unfit or incompetent” to work with the plaintiffs and “posed a particular risk of sexually assaulting them ….” And the New York State Attorney General's Office announced it was investigating whether any civil rights or anti-discrimination laws were broken at the company.

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