Controversy
Charney has been the subject of several sexual harassment lawsuits, at least five since the mid-2000s, that are either still pending or have settled or been dismissed. Through early 2010, none of the accusations had been proven. Some cases remain pending, but the remaining were dismissed, remanded to private arbitration, or “thrown out”.
Charney maintained his innocence in all the lawsuits, telling CNBC that “allegations that I acted improperly at any time are completely a fiction." The company and independent media outlets have publicly accused lawyers in the lawsuits against American Apparel of extortion and of "shaking the company down." On the eve of trial in one case, the plaintiff confessed that she had not been subjected to sexual harassment and agreed to go to an arbitration hearing aimed at clearing Charney's name. However, the plaintiff failed to show up to the hearing and a ruling was unable to be reached. As a result, the $1.3 million settlement was dissolved and the matter reemerged as a negative media controversy for Charney. The company was later sued by four ex-models for sexual harassment, including one separately named plaintiff who sued the company for $250 million. The latter lawsuits were subject to much controversy when unsolicited nude photographs, consensual sexual text messages and requests for money surfaced. Charney was accused of being responsible for these leaks in a later lawsuit.
In 2004, Claudine Ko of Jane magazine published an essay narrating multiple sexual exchanges that occurred between them while spending time with Charney. The article said that Charney consistently propositioned his employees. Charney admitted to using the word "sluts" in front of employees, in a deposition on another sexual harassment case, and denied that "slut" was a derogatory term. The article's publication brought extensive press to the company and Charney, who later responded that he believed that the acts had been done consensually, in private and outside the article's bounds.
Read more about this topic: Dov Charney
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)