



JPMorgan and the delicate art of paying off employees
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.An employee comes forward with embarrassing workplace allegations fraught with legal risks. For company bosses, it presents a thorny dilemma: Fight or pay?It is a situation JPMorgan Chase found itself in weeks before a former banker filed a lawsuit filled with sensational accusations.
It offered $1 million to settle his claims that a female colleague had sexually harassed and assaulted him and that co-workers had subjected him to discrimination, The Wall Street Journal reported. The bank has said it investigated the claims and doesn’t believe they have merit.Though such deals rarely come to light, paying employees to make potential scandals go away isn’t an uncommon practice across corporate America.
Companies have long offered settlements to head off litigation or avoid claims that could tarnish their reputations—even if executives conclude the allegations lack merit.“The vast majority of settlements are business decisions,” said Bill Stein, a Los Angeles-based partner at employment law firm Fisher Phillips, who often works with companies on such matters. Some employers, wanting to avoid the time, expense and headaches of unwanted publicity and litigation, ask: “Can we just make this go away?”The calculations over when and how much to negotiate have become more complicated now that artificial intelligence and social media can easily amplify such allegations.
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