Former Fox News host Andrea Tantaros’s attempt to keep secret the fact that her 2016 book on feminism was written by a man has failed. A judge ordered that the case be unsealed. Tantaros is also suing Fox News for sexual harassment.
The Hollywood Reporter reports:
A New York federal judge has decided to lift the veil from a case captioned as [Under Seal] v. [Under Seal]. It turns out that Michael Krechmer is suing former Fox News personality Andrea Tantaros for allegedly breaching an agreement pertaining to his ghostwriting services on her book Tied Up in Knots.. . . . Krechmer filed his lawsuit in in October 2016 . . . .According to an opinion and order from U.S. District Court Judge Katherine Forrest on Thursday, Krechmer and Tantaros entered into a collaboration agreement in May 2015. The deal included a confidentiality provision. Krechmer alleges that a couple months later, the two agreed to terminate the agreement in favor of a new “Ghostwriting Agreement,” where he’d be paid a flat fee of $150,000.But the latter was an oral deal. Tantaros allegedly did not want to negotiate a deal with Krechmer’s agent because she “feared” it would “cause her editor to discover that she was not writing the book herself” and the book’s publisher, Harper Collins, “would cancel the book if they discovered that there were any negative issues in the writing process, particularly since she was already running more than two years behind schedule.”. . . . Krechmer says he’s only been paid $30,000 for his work, and that after requesting full payment, Tantaros emailed him to demand he sign a non-disclosure agreement. (Although this case is unconnected to the Fox News ones, her attorney there has griped at how the network wanted to hush things up in arbitration. Tantaros is also alleging that she was damaged by fake social media accounts.) Krechmer believes the confidentiality clause of the original agreement is no longer binding. He’s also demanding copyright on the book through his lawsuit.The reason why this has been kept secret is that soon after Krechmer quietly brought the lawsuit, Tantaros moved for a preliminary injunction prohibiting him from violating the confidentiality provision during the pendency of a sealing order. Tantaros argued her career would be seriously jeopardized if word got out that he was the actual author of Tied Up in Knots.That’s not good enough for the judge.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY