UPDATE: After this story was published, we received the following response from McMahon’s lawyer Jessica T. Rosenberg regarding Grant’s motion to strike request:
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.
One day after Vince McMahon’s memorandum was issued, Janel Grant’s legal team filed a motion to strike over the contents of McMahon’s statement.
On Tuesday, McMahon’s legal team put out a 29-page filing containing McMahon’s statement on the allegations from the suit filed by Grant in January. It contains a request to have their dispute settled in arbitration rather than court to adhere to the language of the non-disclosure agreement between the two sides, which was signed in 2022. Grant’s contention is the agreement was voided on several fronts.
McMahon took aim at Grant’s credibility in the statement and denied the charges levied against him in the case, where he is a defendant along with John Laurinaitis and WWE with Grant alleging physical and emotional abuse, sexual assault, and being sexually trafficked.
From Grant’s motion to strike on Wednesday:
Plaintiff Janel Grant (“Janel”) respectfully requests that the Court exercise its inherent power to strike the inflammatory lies made in Defendant Vincent K. McMahon’s (“McMahon”) memorandum of law in support of his motion to compel arbitration, filed April 23, 2024, ECF No. 30-1 (the “Motion”).1 Instead of using his Motion in the appropriate manner—to raise legal arguments concerning whether this dispute must be submitted to arbitration—McMahon instead uses the Motion’s “Preliminary Statement” as a platform to launch vicious falsehoods attacking Janel’s moral character in a transparent attempt to harass and intimidate her into submission.
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.
On Tuesday, the following statement was issued to POST Wrestling among other media outlets from Grant’s lawyer Ann Callis:
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.
