Three women who settled misconduct claims against Bill O’Reilly are looking to add 21st Century Fox to the lawsuit, alleging the network has continued to maintain his image and refuses to cut ties with him, according to a report Friday.
The proposed amended complaint comes from Rachel Witlieb Bernstein, Andrea Mackris, and Rebecca Diamond, who accuse the Fox Network of defaming them and breaching the non-disparagement and confidentiality clauses of their settlements.
“Even after O’Reilly was taken off the air at Fox News as a host of his own cable program on April 19, 2017, O’Reilly remained and remains contractually bound to them under his employment contract with Defendants as that contract has yet to expire,” the proposed amendment reads, according to the Hollywood Reporter. “Fox News and 21st Century Fox continued to promote and maintain the profile of defendant O’Reilly by having him on the air and allowing its on-air hosts to provide a platform for O’Reilly, including for the defamation described herein.”
One example they provide, according to the outlet, is during an episode of Sean Hannity’s radio show on Sept. 18, 2017, when O’Reilly was a guest. They say that O’Reilly “defamed Plaintiffs by portraying himself as a ‘victim’ of women who falsely accused him of sexual harassment and made claims against him, that he had conducted an investigation into many of the women who had reported him and it produced ‘shocking results’ and that he was the ‘latest victim’ of a progressive campaign aimed at getting him off the air.”
O’Reilly reportedly paid a $32 million settlement for sexual harassment allegations just a few months before he was canned from his position at Fox News in the spring of 2017.
