In August, a previous vice president at Tinder filed case alleging that Greg Blatt, the onetime leader of Tinder and its particular moms and dad businesses Match Group and IAC, sexually harassed and assaulted her at a business Christmas time celebration in 2016.
On Thursday, Blatt filed a defamation suit against their accuser, Rosette Pambakian, and against Tinder’s co-founder and former CEO Sean Rad, alleging that the intimate battery pack accusations are element of a smear campaign built to provide Rad and Pambakian leverage in a different multibillion-dollar appropriate battle on the value of Tinder stock. “Rad and Pambakian have actually tried to weaponize an essential social motion,” the defamation suit alleges, “undermining the plight of real victims of intimate punishment by making false accusations in cynical quest for a $2 billion windfall.”
Orin Snyder, legal counsel for Pambakian and Rad, called Blatt’s suit “a new low for IAC/Match and their previous CEO. They continue to retaliate against and smear a victim of intimate attack and also the one who reported it. Their assaults are derived from lies and papers which are removed from context. Whenever most of the evidence concerns light, it shall be apparent exactly exactly what occurred right right here. It’s shameful why these general public organizations are continuing to protect the truth up.”
A spokeswoman for Match Group stated neither the ongoing business nor its moms and dad is a celebration to Blatt’s suit.
Pambakian’s August suit painted a photo of the Blatt that is drunken making improvements over the course of the celebration during the SLS resort in Beverly Hills, culminating in an event in a college accommodation, with other Tinder workers current, in which Blatt allegedly pinned Pambakian to a sleep and started “forcibly groping [Pambakian’s] breasts and legs, and kissing her arms, neck and upper body.”
Blatt’s defamation suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Ca, presents an account that is different of evening. In accordance with Blatt, he and Pambakian flirted during the period of the party, culminating in a accommodation. The suit contends that Blatt and Pambakian had a detailed and mutually admiring relationship both before and following the getaway party, saying “a flurry of friendly communications exchanged the following morning between Pambakian and Blatt by which they joked about their hangovers belie Pambakian’s assertion that she believed she was in fact assaulted by Blatt just hours earlier in the day.”
Noting that Pambakian by by herself never ever formally reported the event, the suit alleges it just stumbled on light as a result of the efforts of Rad, and only after negotiations throughout the valuation of Rad’s Tinder investment dropped aside. Rad reported it to business officials per week after telling their advisor that is financial an e-mail about Blatt: “We are in war. We shall destroy him,” according to Blatt’s suit.
An internal research after Rad’s formal issue unearthed that Blatt had not violated regulations or business policy. Based on Blatt’s suit, “[t]he board did, but, agree with Blatt which he had exercised poor judgment. The board determined that an appropriate reprimand was to cancel an option grant Blatt had been scheduled to receive in early May worth millions of dollars as a result. Blatt accepted their punishment without objection.” Blatt left the ongoing business by the end of 2017.
As proof that Pambakian had a motive that is financial misrepresenting the incident, Blatt’s suit tips to a unique litigation funding contract between her and Rad that promised her upfront and contingent payments totaling huge amount of money in return for taking part in the lawsuit on the valuation of Tinder and including her harassment claim for the reason that suit. Blatt alleges this contract ended up being Rad’s technique for damaging their credibility as a witness into the valuation case. “In essence, Rad had been prepared to spend Pambakian away from his pocket that is own in to convince her to participate the valuation lawsuit,” Blatt’s problem states. “This arrangement just made sense from Rad’s viewpoint if he thought that Pambakian’s participation would increase their potential for loveaholics success within the suit.”