Tag: Janel Grant

Janel Grant’s attorneys have filed to strike statements made in Vince McMahon’s preliminary response to the lawsuit.

On Wednesday, Grant’s attorneys filed a motion to strike against what they called “inflammatory lies” made in McMahon’s memorandum. Grant’s motion says that the statements made were used “as a platform to launch vicious falsehoods attacking Janel’s moral character in an attempt to harass and intimidate her into submission.”

The motion further states:

McMahon’s easily refuted lies have no place in this case. It was not necessary, reasonable, or responsible to use a public filing to impugn Janel’s moral character. Indeed, McMahon’s desperate attempt to distract from the legal substance of the Motion highlight its weakness and the weakness of his overall case.

This Court has inherent power to strike a parties’ filings. Accordingly, Janel respectfully requests that the Court exercise that power to strike the Motion’s “Preliminary Statement” in its entirety and admonish McMahon and his counsel that such statements have no place in civil litigation.

In a statement released to Post Wrestling, McMahon’s lawyer Jessica T. Rosenberg issued a response to Grant’s motion to strike:

Plaintiff had no right to bring this case in a public court but did so anyway. Now that she chose this public forum to falsely accuse Mr. McMahon, she wants to silence his ability to respond. She can’t have it both ways.

On Tuesday, McMahon filed a memorandum to seek arbitration. His statement vehemently denied Grant’s accusations of sexual assault, abuse, and trafficking:

By publicly filing her salacious, false and defamatory Complaint, Plaintiff has brazenly and intentionally violated a binding contract to arbitrate. The Complaint’s outrageous claims of sexual abuse and coercion are pure fiction—plainly intended to garner publicity—and are flatly contradicted by Plaintiff’s own contemporaneous statements. Contrary to Plaintiff’s false allegations, Plaintiff and Defendant engaged in a consensual relationship during which Defendant never coerced Plaintiff into doing anything and never mistreated her in any way.

McMahon resigned from TKO and WWE in January shortly after Grant filed the lawsuit. 

Vince McMahon’s legal team contends a binding arbitration clause exists in the NDA Janel Grant signed in 2021. 

McMahon filed a motion in the District of Connecticut on Tuesday to compel arbitration of Grant’s lawsuit. This means McMahon is asking the court to recognize the arbitration clause and send the matter to private arbitration hearings with an independent arbitrator rather than litigation. 

“Typically, a party makes this motion when it believes that mere mention of the evidence during trial would be highly prejudicial and could not be remedied by an instruction to disregard,” reads a description of this type of motion via Trellis Law. 

Today’s filing by McMahon’s team reads:

By publicly filing her salacious, false and defamatory Complaint, Plaintiff has brazenly and intentionally violated a binding contract to arbitrate.

The filing continues to allege McMahon and Grant engaged in a consensual relationship and references the “love letter” she wrote to him in 2021 as proof of this. 

Contrary to Plaintiff’s false allegations, Plaintiff and Defendant (collectively, the “Parties”) engaged in a consensual relationship during which Defendant never coerced Plaintiff into doing anything and never mistreated her in any way. In fact, in a love letter Plaintiff wrote to Defendant shortly before the Parties ended their relationship, Plaintiff described Defendant as “[m]y best friend, my love and my everything,” praising him for being the “wonderful, tender, vulnerable, heart-on-your-sleeve soul you really are.” It is incredulous that Plaintiff, a then 42-year-old woman who claims on her resume to have a law degree from Pace University, would have written these words to Defendant months after all the events in the Complaint of alleged abuse, coercion, and “sex-trafficking” took place.

Several paragraphs in the filing refute claims in Grant’s lawsuit that she was in financial difficulties or was a full-time caregiver leading up to her relationship with McMahon. 

At the time the Parties met in 2019, Plaintiff was not “dealing with profound grief [from her parents’ deaths] and struggling financially” as described in her Complaint and she had not been “devoting years to around-the-clock caregiving” of her parents.

Those statements are complete falsehoods. Based on a foreclosure action against Plaintiff and her parents, Plaintiff’s father passed away on April 18, 2017—two years before Plaintiff met Defendant – and his marital status was recorded as “widowed” confirming Plaintiff’s mother had passed earlier.

The filing also notes that Grant was living with her fiance during the time of her relationship with McMahon and that both parties were aware the other was involved in other romantic relationships.

During the Parties’ consensual relationship, Plaintiff and Defendant knew that the other was also involved in other romantic relationships. Plaintiff was living in Park Tower, a luxury multi-million-dollar building in Stamford, Connecticut with her long-time fiancé, attorney, Brian Goncalves.

Plaintiff and Goncalves lived in the same luxury building as Defendant—just four floors below—when the Parties began their affair in 2019. Plaintiff would often visit Defendant at his condominium at all hours, including at 2:30 a.m., to pursue their affair and then return back to her condominium with Goncalves the same night.

The filing then notes both parties agreed to end their relationship in 2022 and an NDA was drawn up and signed. The agreement includes a clause that states disputes would be resolved through arbitration. 

In fact, because the Parties wished to “preserve the confidential and private nature” of any disputes under the Agreement, they specifically provided in the Agreement that disputes would be resolved through arbitration. Plaintiff was represented by a lawyer who negotiated the Agreement for her before she executed it.When Defendant learned that Plaintiff, despite her promises, had violated the Agreement by wrongfully disclosing both the existence of the Agreement and their relationship, he exercised his contractual right to withhold payment otherwise owed under the Agreement.

In response, Plaintiff sought to harm him. She intentionally violated the enforceable contract with her salacious, false and defamatory public filing. However, the FAA and binding United States Supreme Court precedent—and Plaintiff’s own agreement—require that if Plaintiff wishes to proceed with her fictitious claims, she must do so in arbitration, not in this Court, and that this action be stayed pending arbitration.

The filing continues to refute all allegations against McMahon. It concludes:

When the Complaint’s allegations are adjudicated in the proper forum (arbitration), witnesses are called to testify under oath, and all communications between the Parties (including those authored by Plaintiff which she intentionally did not share in her Complaint) are produced, the allegations and claims will be disproven and Plaintiff will be exposed for the liar she is. Meanwhile, for the foregoing reasons and as set forth further below, Defendant’s motion should be granted.

Ann Callis, the lawyer representing Grant in the case, issued a statement to Wrestlenomics about today’s filing from McMahon’s team. Callis refutes claims that Grant was not a caregiver for her ailing parents before entering a relationship with McMahon and also states she was no longer in a relationship with Goncalves when staying at his apartment. 

Callis said:

Vince McMahon has never known a storyline that he doesn’t twist to fit his own shameful narrative. Her father was in in-home hospice during his final days where Janel continued to care for him around the clock. Prior to his death, she had been caring for her blind, wheelchair-bound mother. Using the grief of someone who lost both of her parents is an all new level of disgusting.

Her ex-boyfriend allowed her to stay in the apartment as she rebuilt her life and resume post-taking care of her parents. She had no job and no other financial support to lean back on.

The arbitration clause in Grant’s NDA, as written in today’s filing by McMahon, reads:

In the event of any dispute arising under or out of this Agreement, its construction, interpretation, application, performance or breach, the parties agree to first attempt to resolve such disputes informally and prior to taking any formal legal action to resolve such disputes. In the event any such dispute cannot be resolved informally, all parties hereto agree that the sole and exclusive legal method to resolve any and all disputes and/or controversies is to commence binding arbitration under the Federal Arbitration Act pursuant to the procedures of the American Arbitration Association and to do so by sealed proceedings which preserve the confidential and private nature of this Agreement. The parties agree to discuss the venue for any such arbitration proceeding if and when such a dispute arises which cannot be informally resolved; but in the event the parties cannot agree on a venue then the exclusive venue for any arbitration proceeding shall be in Stamford, Connecticut. The prevailing party, as determined by the arbitration tribunal, shall be entitled to recover from the non-prevailing party all of its attorney’s fees and costs.

The lawyer representing Janel Grant says Grant was coerced into writing a “love letter” to Vince McMahon in late-2021. 

The New York Post published an article on Monday containing a lengthy email Grant wrote to McMahon on December 24, 2021, in which she professes her love for WWE’s former executive chairman.

Grant’s lawyer Ann Callis said McMahon instructed Grant to write the letter which was obtained from Grant’s laptop as part of WWE’s investigation into the allegations against McMahon. It is expected to appear in future court filings as Grant’s lawsuit against McMahon and WWE proceeds. 

“Frankly, it’s pretty disgusting that Vince’s weeks-late attempt to defend his horrendous behavior — behavior he claims to this day never happened — is to try to showcase letters that Vince himself coerced her to write,” Callis said to the Post.

“His psychological torture of her continues — as is typical of abusive predators who respond to women speaking out with increased threats. While Janel isn’t a stranger to his intimidation tactics, this is a new low even for him.” 

Callis also noted that much of Grant’s letter to McMahon was plagiarized. For instance, Grant wrote to McMahon, “I feel understood, accepted, loved and appreciated for who I am at my core. You see my heart. You see my soul. There are few people who know the secret of making a heaven here on earth. You are one of those rare people” in lines taken verbatim from the 1947 film “The Bishop’s Wife.” Another part of the letter was taken from a 2021 GQ interview with Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly. 

McMahon’s lawyer Jessica Taub Rosenberg of Kasowitz Benson Torres (the same firm that represented MLW in its 2023 antitrust lawsuit against WWE) contends the email was written of Grant’s own free will. 

“No one coerced Ms. Grant to write that letter. She wrote it of her own accord. The fact that the letter shows it was the 24th draft speaks volumes,” Rosenberg said.

“Nowhere in her voluminous complaint, that is replete with fabrications, does she mention being coerced into such behavior. The language of the letter is consistent with other communications she made to Mr. McMahon over the course of their consensual relationship,” Rosenberg added.

The full 2200 word email can be read on the NY Post website here. 

Janel Grant’s attorney says her inbox has been flooded by those willing to attest to a “culture of corruption” at WWE. 

On Thursday, lawyer Ann Callis appeared on “Morning in America” and spoke about the lawsuit her client filed last week against Vince McMahon, John Laurinaitis and WWE. 

“It’s been a long process, and she (Grant) wants to speak out for any other victims and eradicate this culture of corruption that has permeated every cell of the WWE,” Callis said to host Markie Martin.

Grant’s attorney continued to say she feels “overwhelmed” by the number of people who have come forward, including other possible victims. 

“My office and my inbox have had a barrage of people wanting to come forward to attest about this culture of corruption and also possible victims,” she said. “We are just beginning now to wade through all this, but we’re frankly overwhelmed.”

“(Grant) wants justice because she wants to change the culture that is going on in the WWE. She wants to help other victims. She thinks by speaking out and coming forward first, that others will feel emboldened and encouraged to come forth,” Callis continued.

In the lawsuit, Grant contends that WWE’s internal probe into Vince McMahon that concluded in November 2022 was a “sham.” It states that no one from the company reached out to Grant regarding the investigation despite her stating she was willing to take part. 

Following this, former member of WWE’s Board of Directors and head of the internal probe, Jeff Speed, told the New York Times that the investigation “included outreach to Ms. Grant and engagement with her lawyer.”

McMahon had Speed removed from the WWE Board of Directors upon his return to the company as its executive chairman in early 2023. 

“Vince McMahon, in his capacity as controlling shareholder of the Company, has removed JoEllen Lyons Dillon, Jeffrey R. Speed and Alan M. Wexler from the Board,” a WWE press release from January 6, 2023 reads. 

The lawsuit filed against McMahon, Laurinaitis, and WWE was the featured story in last week’s edition of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter, available on the site now for subscribers. In the issue, our own Dave Meltzer writes, “For third time since last June’s revelation about women being paid hush money regarding sexual activity involving Vince McMahon, charges in a lawsuit filed on 1/25, may finally end the career of the most powerful man in the history of the industry.”