In a court filing Friday, Easterbrook’s lawyers argued that McDonald’s doesn’t have grounds to claw back the severance package.
In the company’s lawsuit against Easterbrook, it alleged that he misled the board about his relationships with employees when speaking with investigators before he left the company last year. McDonald’s lawsuit states that the company was tipped off to other relationships in July, and opened a new investigation which found proof of three sexual relationships.
The evidence for those relationships, according to the suit, came in the form of “dozens of nude, partially nude, or sexually explicit photographs and videos of various women,” including photographs of the three employees. Easterbrook allegedly attached the images to emails he sent from his work to his personal account.
In the motion to dismiss, Easterbrook’s lawyers said that the revelation of the three additional relationships could not have been new to McDonald’s, and argued that McDonald’s own investigators would have discovered the evidence last year because it was on the company’s servers.
The company “filed a meritless — and misleading — lawsuit,” his lawyers wrote in the motion. They added that McDonald’s is “a sophisticated entity represented by numerous internal and external experts,” and that it “cannot credibly allege a breach of contract claim.”
The motion also said that the lawsuit should have been filed in Illinois, where Easterbrook lives and the McDonald’s headquarters are located. The lawsuit was filed in Delaware.