CBS has been forced to pay actress Bobbie Phillips millions of dollars in a legal settlement after sexual harassment claims she made against disgraced ex-executive Les Moonves were leaked to the New York Times, a report said Wednesday.
The settlement was reached after CBS hired two law firms — Debevoise & Plimpton and Covington & Burling — to investigate sexual misconduct allegations made by several women at the network against Moonves, Vanity Fair reported.
A draft report of the investigation and a number of other details about the internal probe — including Phillips’ allegation that Moonves forced her to perform oral sex on him in a 1995 meeting — then leaked to the Times in 2018.
As a result, CBS and Covington were forced to pay Phillips millions of dollars because they breached her confidentiality agreement by letting the information leak to the newspaper, according to Vanity Fair.
“Debevoise is not party to any agreements with any parties concerning its work for CBS,” a Debevoise & Plimpton spokesperson said.
The settlement was “rumored to be in the tens of millions” and inked in the fall of 2019, the report said.
Julie Chen (his wife) has been awfully quiet….