Accused of sexual attack, former Tinder CEO sues his accuser for defamation
The onetime chief executive of Tinder and its parent companies Match Group and IAC, sexually harassed and assaulted her at a company Christmas party in 2016 in August, a former vice president at Tinder filed a lawsuit alleging that Greg Blatt.
On Thursday, Blatt filed a defamation suit against their accuser, Rosette Pambakian, and against Tinder’s co-founder and previous CEO Sean Rad, alleging that the battery that is sexual are included in a smear campaign made to provide Rad and Pambakian leverage in a different multibillion-dollar legal battle throughout the value of Tinder stock. “Rad and Pambakian have actually tried to weaponize an essential movement that is social” the defamation suit alleges, “undermining the plight of real victims of intimate punishment by simply making false accusations in cynical search for a $2 billion windfall.”
Orin Snyder, a lawyer for Pambakian and Rad, called Blatt’s suit “a new low for IAC/Match and their previous CEO. They continue steadily to retaliate against and smear a target of intimate attack plus the individual who reported it. Their assaults derive from lies and papers being removed from context. Whenever every one of the evidence concerns light, it shall be apparent just just just what took place right right here. It’s shameful why these general general public companies are continuing to protect the truth up.”
A spokeswoman for Match Group stated neither the ongoing business nor its moms and dad is a celebration to Blatt’s suit.
Pambakian’s August suit painted a photo of the Blatt that is drunken making improvements over the course of the party in the SLS resort in Beverly Hills, culminating in an event in a college accommodation, along with other Tinder workers current, in which Blatt presumably pinned Pambakian to a sleep and started “forcibly groping [Pambakian’s] breasts and legs, and kissing her arms, throat and upper body.”
Blatt’s defamation suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Ca, presents an account that is different of night. In accordance with Blatt, he and Pambakian flirted over the course of the party, culminating in a accommodation. The suit contends that Blatt and Pambakian had an in depth and mutually admiring relationship both before and following the getaway celebration, saying “a flurry of friendly communications exchanged the following early morning between Pambakian and Blatt by which they joked about their hangovers belie Pambakian’s assertion that she thought she was indeed assaulted by Blatt just hours earlier in the day.”
Noting that Pambakian herself never ever formally reported the incident, the suit alleges it just stumbled on light as a result of the efforts of Rad, and just after negotiations throughout the valuation of Rad’s Tinder investment dropped apart. Rad reported it to business officials per week after telling their monetary consultant, in an e-mail about Blatt: “We are in war. We shall destroy him,” according to Blatt’s suit.
An investigation that is internal Rad’s formal grievance unearthed that Blatt hadn’t violated what the law states or business policy. In accordance with Blatt’s suit, “[t]he board did, but, agree with Blatt he had exercised judgment that is poor. As a result, the board determined that a proper reprimand would be to cancel a choice grant Blatt was indeed planned to get during the early might well worth millions of bucks. Blatt accepted their punishment without objection.” Blatt left the business at the conclusion of 2017.
As proof that Pambakian had a economic motive for misrepresenting the event, Blatt’s suit tips to a silly litigation funding contract between her and Rad that promised her upfront and contingent payments totaling huge amount of money in return for taking part in the lawsuit within the valuation of Tinder and including her harassment claim for the reason that suit. Blatt alleges this contract had been Rad’s technique for damaging their credibility as a witness within the valuation situation.