Laurie Luhn, the former Fox News staffer who made sexual abuse allegations against Roger Ailes, has dropped a $750 million lawsuit against Showtime over the forthcoming miniseries “Loudest Voice.”
Luhn filed suit in January, accusing Showtime, Blumhouse and journalist Gabriel Sherman of violating her right to privacy. The suit alleged that Sherman was “cashing in” on her history of psychosexual torture at Ailes’ hands, and had failed even to notify her that the story would be turned into a series.
Luhn and her attorney, Larry Klayman, filed a notice on Friday dismissing the case.
“The matter has been resolved to the parties’ mutual satisfaction,” Klayman said in a statement.
The network declined to comment.
The seven-episode series is set to debut on Sunday on Showtime. The show is based on Sherman’s 2014 book, “The Loudest Voice in the Room,” and his subsequent reporting. Following Ailes’ ouster in July 2016, Sherman published a story based on 11 hours of interviews with Luhn, who alleged that Ailes had sexually abused her for 20 years.
In the suit, Luhn accused Sherman of certain factual discrepancies and alleged that she never gave him the right to use her story in a TV show. She also said she was not paid. The case was initially filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, and then dropped and refiled in Delaware federal court.
In a review of the show, NPR’s David Bianculli noted that the treatment of Luhn “is uncomfortable to watch.”
“Here comes the first television production directly dramatizing a modern-day, high-profile sexual harassment case,” Bianculli wrote, “yet it does so in a way that almost feels like its own type of exploitation.”
In April, Klayman filed a separate $120 million defamation suit against Fox News and its CEO, Suzanne Scott. That suit claimed that Scott had defamed Luhn by giving an interview in which Scott said that she was unaware of any sexual misconduct allegations against Ailes. Scott and Fox have filed a motion to dismiss the case.
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Laurie Luhn, the former Fox News staffer who made sexual abuse allegations against Roger Ailes, has dropped a $750 million lawsuit against Showtime over the forthcoming miniseries “Loudest Voice.” Luhn filed suit in January, accusing Showtime, Blumhouse and journalist Gabriel Sherman of violating her right to privacy. The suit alleged that Sherman was “cashing in” […]
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Actor Kevin Spacey has been hit with a lawsuit for an alleged groping of a busboy at a Nantucket bar in July 2016. Spacey is already facing a criminal charge of indecent assault stemming from the incident. He has pleaded not guilty and is set to go on trial sometime this fall. In the suit, […]
