** UPDATED ARTICLE **
A response to the latest Vince McMahon filing was issued to Wrestlenomics’ Brandon Thurston. Janel Grant’s attorney, Ann Callis, sent the following:
For any comment, see our original filing. We’re confident the truth is laid out well there.
** ORIGINAL ARTICLE **
Attorneys acting for Vince McMahon in the Janel Grant lawsuit have filed a new legal memorandum with the US District Court in Connecticut.
Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics first reported the latest development in the case against WWE, McMahon, and John Laurinaitis.
Attorneys for Vince McMahon have filed a new memorandum opposing Janel Grant's motion to strike McMahon's earlier statements attempting to discredit Grant.
McMahon's side argues his earlier statements provide "relevant context to the Motion to Compel Arbitration" and says…
— Brandon Thurston (@BrandonThurston) May 13, 2024
On Tuesday, April 23rd, McMahon’s team lodged a 29-page filing requesting that Grant’s complaint should go to private arbitration rather than be heard in court. They argued that arbitration was required in line with the original non-disclosure agreement.
The next day, April 24th, Janel Grant’s representation filed a motion asking the court to strike the entirety of the ‘Preliminary Statement’ in McMahon’s filing as “inflammatory”. Grant’s motion to strike stated:
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.
Now, McMahon’s team has responded with its formal opposition to the motion to strike. Monday’s memorandum states that the earlier defense document contains “relevant context to the Motion to Compel Arbitration” and that Grant’s motion to strike is “meritless and the height of hypocrisy”.
The new document also states that Grant’s original lawsuit included:
…private sexual text messages from Defendant without including any of Plaintiff’s responses to those texts—responses which are equally and often more aggressive and provocative than Defendant’s communications and show not only that the relationship was consensual, but also that in many instances the Plaintiff was the initiator.
The memorandum goes on to state that McMahon no longer has the text messages because he deleted them when the relationship ended. However, it adds that discovery will show that Grant sent him sexually explicit images and messages:
Plaintiff presumably still has all of these text messages but she did not include them in her publicly filed Complaint because she wanted to paint a distorted, false picture.
The remainder of the new filing cites legal arguments and case law to refute Grant’s motion to strike. It includes a reference to Hart vs. World Wrestling Entertainment Inc, which included a motion to strike. That was a 2010 case that Martha Hart took against WWE over the use of Owen Hart’s likeness.
