A federal judge in Connecticut has accepted former WWE employee Janel Grant's updated version of her lawsuit.
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A federal judge in Connecticut has accepted former WWE employee Janel Grant’s
updated version of her lawsuit, re-filed in January to add to her original complaint submitted a year earlier against WWE, former CEO Vince McMahon, and former executive John Laurinaitis.
In an additional ruling, Judge Sarah F. Russell ruled to hold off on discovery in the case, generally approving the defendants’ motion on that issue, but Russell is allowing Grant to request specific “motion-related” discovery that would pertain to the issue of arbitration. Discovery is the phase of a lawsuit in which certain evidence is turned over.
The defendants have pushed to move this case into private arbitration, citing the arbitration clause that was part of the nondisclosure agreement that Grant and McMahon signed in January 2022. The defendants are expected to resubmit their motions to compel arbitration by June 13, at which point Grant could ask for discovery related to those motions by June 23.
Russell’s ruling, filed on Monday, rejected
arguments from McMahon and WWE that the amended complaint shouldn’t be allowed because it would be legally “futile” or in “bad faith.” Instead, the court found that Grant met the low legal threshold required to revise her complaint at this relatively early stage of litigation. Russell’s order does not evaluate the truth of the allegations in Grant’s complaint, nor does it rule on the defendants’ request to move the case to arbitration.
Grant’s lawsuit alleges she was sex trafficked and sexually assaulted, including by McMahon and Laurinaitis, during her employment with WWE. McMahon and Laurinaitis have denied her allegations. The defendants have not been charged with any crimes.
Russell is a new federal judge who was assigned this case in early January, as Judge Jeffrey A. Meyer was having health problems and later passed away.
In her order on Grant’s request to update her lawsuit, Russell cited precedent from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the higher court above the U.S. District Court for Connecticut, where this case is underway. The precedent states that courts should use a more flexible, “justice requires” standard for amendments to complaints, unless there has been a formal scheduling order that clearly sets a deadline to make changes. Since no deadline was ever set in this case, Russell ruled that the more permissive standard applies.
Therefore, the judge ruled that Grant didn’t need to show “good cause” or explain why she waited to change or add information to her lawsuit. McMahon’s attorneys argued that the changes to her complaint did not help her legal case and therefore shouldn’t be allowed. McMahon in particular, pointed to de-anonymizing individuals, including WWE executives who were previously obscured under pseudonyms, as an effort on Grant’s part to merely create media attention. Attorneys for the former WWE CEO asserted that Grant’s additions are in bad faith and were known to her when she originally filed the lawsuit a year prior.
“It is certainly clear that some of Grant’s proposed amendments include facts she knew or should have known when she filed the Complaint.” Russell wrote in the order. “But her newly pleaded facts do not deprive Defendants of their ability to timely assert that her claims are subject to arbitration. I accordingly decline to find her amendments are in bad faith.”
“We’re grateful that Judge Sarah Russell let the facts prevail today and granted our motion to amend Janel Grant’s complaint against Vince McMahon and WWE,” representatives for Grant said in a statement to POST Wrestling. “The amended complaint is essential to understanding the extent of McMahon’s abuse and trafficking of Ms. Grant and the degree to which WWE failed her. We look forward to moving forward with Ms. Grant’s amended complaint and taking another step toward bringing the truth to light and ensuring Ms. Grant’s allegations against McMahon and WWE are taken seriously.”
Separate requests for statements to the defendants in this case were not immediately returned.
Russell stated that the legal standard for this ruling isn’t about whether the updated complaint makes Grant’s legal case stronger, but whether the added details are obviously legally useless. Because Grant isn’t adding entirely new claims to the lawsuit, the judge ruled that her changes aren’t “futile” or otherwise functioning as an attempt to unduly delay the case.
Even if the defendants are correct in that the changes to the lawsuit won’t ultimately affect the issue of whether this dispute goes to arbitration, the judge deferred weighing in on that decision until later.
