The "legal" will give it legs it wouldn't have had otherwise.
Rathergate Lives, Especially The Legal Questions
Bob Kohn's media watch
I was struck by the following headline in today's New York Times: "No Break In The Storm Over Harvard President's Words"--and why we have not seen a similar headline, "No Break In The Storm Over CBS News."
Earlier this week, Bill Kristol writing for the editors of the Weekly Standard, listed Rathergate's unanswered questions in "Fishing Exedition," as did Jonathan Last in his "CBS Whitewash," John Podhoretz in "Political Bias? What Political Bias?" and Terry Eastland in "Which Way Is Up?"
The New York Observer has two reports today: "Dear Dan Rather: Be a Stand-Up Star And Step Down Now," the subject of my previous post, and "CBS News Roiling, 60 Minutes Four Refuse to Yield."
In that latter story, Joe Hagan reports on that the three staffers who CBS asked to resign—executive producer Josh Howard, his top deputy Mary Murphy, and CBS News senior vice president Betsy West—have declined to actually tender their resignations.
[T]hose who know Ms. West, Mr. Howard and Ms. Murphy said that they have an uneasy choice to make between fighting for their own professional reputations—by expanding on those missing links and possibly trying to bring top executives down with them—or peaceably drawing the best possible severance package from the company.
Here's how I think it's playing out. Written employment contracts are commonplace in the entertainment and media business. Such agreements, whether in the form of a formal contract or as part of an offer letter, tend to have carefully negotiated severance provisions, providing that, upon termination of the employee's employment "without cause," the employee is entitled to a specified severance payout (the so-called, "golden parachute").
The problem is, when an employee is asked to "resign," it could be construed as a voluntary resignation, and when an employee quits, he is not typically entitled to severance. (Under those circumstances, a new employer will commonly make up for the lost severance with a signing bonus or a promise of a similar severance package under the new employment arrangement).
The CBS employees who have been asked to resign would naturally expect that their severance package kick in. CBS may be taking the position that since these are "resignations," they do not have to pay severance, or in the alternative, if CBS is forced to terminate the employees, such terminations are being made "with cause," which would release CBS News from its severance obligation.
Good employment contracts contain a definition of "cause," often negotiated on behalf of the employee very narrowly, such as "repeated failures to perform job duties after repeated notice in writing" or "a conviction for embezzelment or fraud," and the like. If the agreement simply states "cause," without defining it, a dispute often ensues. Did the actions of these three executives justify a termination "for cause"?
It is, in my view, this legal entanglement over severance that may be causing the delay in the "resignations" of the three CBS executives.
Complicating matters further, if the executives believe they have been wronged, they may be making threats of legal action against CBS. At the end of the day, this will likely result, not in a lawsuit, but an increase in the severance packages in exchange for the settlement of those claims. |
