BroBible
The New York Jets have filed their response to a lawsuit brought by Elaine Chen, the team’s former Vice President of Finance, who is suing the team for allegedly firing her over sexual harassment claims she made against Jets President Hymie Elhai. In the team’s response, the Jets also filed six counterclaims against Chen claiming that she and her husband, Larry Fitzpatrick, also a former Jets employee, conspired to defame Elhai in an attempt to get him fired.
Elaine Chen filed a lawsuit against the New York Jets last week over allegations that she was fired after her husband told team investigators that Hymie Elhai had sexually harassed female employees. The team quickly denied the allegations, claiming that they were “baseless,” and that they would be “filing legal claims, including defamation and libel against Ms. Chen, her husband, Larry Fitzpatrick, and other parties involved.”
On Tuesday, the Jets filed a 67-page countersuit alleging Chen participated in an “unlawful conspiracy” against Jets President Hymie Elhai “solely for the purpose of destroying his impeccable reputation and career.”
In the countersuit, the New York Jets claim Elaine Chen knowingly participated in the submission of a fabricated anonymous email in which Elhai was accused of of sending inappropriate text messages to female Jets staffers as well as other forms of misconduct. That email then led to an investigation of Elhai by the Jets in which the allegations were proven false.
A third, unidentified former Jets employee admitted when confronted by the team that the allegations of harassment against Hymie Elhai were made up and that he had worked with Fitzpatrick to create and send the email.
Front Office Sports reports…
Chen, Fitzpatrick and others fabricated the allegations about Elhai, sent them to a group of other Jets executives, and were found to be discussing them over text message and email, according to the Jets’ countersuit. They openly discussed the plot and told each other to delete various messages in order to keep them hidden. In one instance, the team says an unidentified co-conspirator accidentally sent a private email that was part of the plot to Fitzpatrick’s work email, then sent another message saying “Whoops. Sent to your work email by mistake. Delete.” The co-conspirator also included guidance on how Fitzpatrick could “deceive” the Jets into thinking he was not involved.
The countersuit filed by the Jets against Elaine Chen claims her lawsuit against the team is “nothing more than a desperate extension of the conspiracy and an attempt to shakedown [the Jets], which [are] no longer paying Chen’s or Fitzpatrick’s salaries, and to avoid the inevitable and just consequences of their misconduct.”
The team claims to have proof of the conspiracy in the form of dozens of texts and screenshots from Fitzpatrick’s team-owned phone, which was collected when he was fired. Following a forensic review of the phone, the Jets say they found evidence that Fitzpatrick lied about his participation in sending the anonymous email and that he deleted approximately 4,000 texts related...
