is suing the Jets<\/a>, claiming she was unjustly fired in response to sexual harassment allegations against team president Hymie Elhai.<\/p>\nIn their response, the Jets allege what they call an \u201cunlawful conspiracy\u201d perpetrated by Chen, her husband Larry Fitzpatrick \u2014 who also worked for the Jets \u2014 and other former employees.<\/p>\n
The Jets filed six counterclaims against Chen, including libel for labeling Elhai a \u201csexual predator\u201d in her suit, and repeating the allegations of sexual harassment against him, which the Jets say they investigated and found to be untrue.<\/p>\n
The answer filed by the Jets includes as exhibits purported text messages between Chen, Fitzpatrick, who was the team\u2019s vice president of ticket sales, and an unidentified former employee. The Jets claim the messages show the three discussed the plot that the Jets say was meant to destroy Elhai\u2019s reputation and career.<\/p>\n
Elaine Chen, the Jets\u2019 former vice president of finance. Elaine Chen \/ LinkedIn<\/p>\n
Larry Fitzpatrick, Elaine Chen\u2019s husband who was the Jets\u2019 vice president of ticket sales. Obtained by the NY Post<\/p>\n
The Jets also allege they found evidence of inappropriate behavior on Fitzpatrick\u2019s company-issued phone, including pictures of his genitals, interactions with women on adult websites, text messages objectifying women and gambling, which is prohibited by the NFL.<\/p>\n
The allegations against Elhai were sent to the Jets in an anonymous email in July, according to the court filing. The Jets claim their investigation discovered it was sent by a former employee, who later confessed to conspiring with Fitzpatrick to fabricate the allegations against Elhai and to sending the email.<\/p>\n
The Jets allege they were tipped off to Fitzpatrick\u2019s involvement because he was one of the recipients of the anonymous email. They claim to have interviewed Fitzpatrick as part of the investigation and he denied seeing the email. When the Jets told him they had a record of him receiving it, he took out his phone and began \u201cfuriously tapping the top and bottom of the phone screen,\u201d according to the latest court document. The Jets claim they asked him to turn over his phone after the interview and allegedly found 4,000 recently deleted messages, some relevant to the investigation.<\/p>\n
Jets team president Hymie Elhai. AP<\/p>\n
The Jets claim Fitzpatrick\u2019s text messages with the former employee include messages like \u201cI hope this buries him,\u201d allegedly referring to Elhai. In a subsequent interview, the Jets claim Fitzpatrick admitted his role in the email.<\/p>\n
Chen denied any role in the conspiracy and alleges the Jets fired her solely because she is married to Fitzpatrick. She also accuses the team of not investigating the claims against Elhai, but rather finding out who sent the email and \u201ctargeting anyone who supported the allegations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Jets\u2019 response includes purported text messages between Fitzpatrick and Chen from the day after the email was sent where he allegedly said he was forwarding an email to her on a Yahoo account. According to the text messages filed in court, he asks if she read the email, and she writes back, \u201cPretty Brilliant.\u201d They also text about a lunch with the former employee the Jets claim wrote the email.<\/p>\n
Chen\u2019s attorney, Claudia Reis, was not immediately available for comment. Attempts to reach both Chen and Fitzpatrick were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Jets filed an answer to the explosive lawsuit brought by one of their former employees and also…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[3130,5702,349,99],"class_list":["post-208803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-lawsuits","tag-new-york-jets","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}