A CBS shareholder lawsuit filed in August has been amended to accuse former CBS chairman-CEO Leslie Moonves and three other insiders of making suspect stock sales because they knew the sexual misconduct scandal that toppled Moonves was about to break. (Variety)
The shareholders leading the suit are Gene Samit and John Lantz. Their August suit alleged that CBS failed to disclose information in proxy statements that would have a material effect on its business. Now, in an amended consolidated complaint, the plaintiffs are going a step further in an attempt to show CBS executives had knowledge of wrongness. (THR / THR, Esq.)
A group of executives—including Moonves, acting CEO Joseph Ianniello, Chief Accounting Officer Lawrence Liding and former Chief Communications Officer Gil Schwartz—sold 3.4 million shares from the start of 2017 through mid-2018, before The New Yorker published allegations by women against Moonves and others at the network, according to the revised complaint, filed Monday night by the Construction Laborers Pension Trust for Southern California. (Bloomberg)
As the suit mentions, there were reports that Moonves knew about an LAPD criminal investigation into sexual assault allegations as early as November 2017, and that he let the CBS board of directors know about the investigation. (TheWrap)