PBS owes him millions under a distribution contract after he was unfairly terminated. PBS' defense — and its counterclaims — could cause business lawyers to take another look at how best to head off scandal.
"For the most part, if you have a morals problem, you want it to go way," says Jeff Greenbaum, an advertising attorney at Frankfurt Kurnit who has been following the Smiley case. "The last thing a brand wants is to take its [problematic] association and highlight it so publicly. The same thing with talent: The last thing you want to do is to defend in a public forum. If there's any dispute, you work hard to settle it privately and unwind the relationship.
The trial now sets up further provocative questions: Do consensual relationships with subordinates count as a "bad act"? A few decades ago — maybe even a few years ago — probably not, but in the era of #MeToo, and with new focus on power dynamics in the workplace, perhaps so. Does PBS' knowledge of Smiley's behavior factor in? Before he signed his most recent contract, thereported some of the allegations.