On Friday, lawyers for Paramount, Moonves, and the plaintiffs filed a proposed settlement agreement in federal court in Manhattan. CBS and Moonves both denied deceiving investors.
In December 2019, CBS merged with its sister company Viacom Inc. The merged company was known as ViacomCBS until February, when it was renamed Paramount Global.
More than a dozen women accused Moonves of harassment and intimidation during the #MeToo movement, including exposing himself and pressuring women for sex. Moonves has denied any wrongdoing and stated that the relationships were mutual.
Moonves resigned under pressure in September 2018, and CBS announced in December that he had been fired for cause and denied a $120 million severance package, based on a board review of the findings of an investigation into Moonves' behavior and the CBS culture conducted by two law firms hired by CBS.
Requests for comment from CBS and Moonves' lawyers were not immediately returned. The plaintiffs' lawyers at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd did not respond right away.
In 2018, a group of shareholders filed a lawsuit. They accused CBS and Moonves of deceiving investors by failing to disclose allegations against him at the outset and making public statements in support of #MeToo.
Moonves, for example, spoke at a 2017 industry conference called #MeToo ""I think it's important that a company's culture will not allow for this," he said, referring to "a watershed moment." We didn't realize how much we didn't know."
In 2020, U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni in Manhattan determined that the statement cited by the plaintiffs was the only one that could have misled investors and dismissed all other claims.