A $260 million sex-slave lawsuit against American Apparel founder Dov Charney has been thrown out of court after a Brooklyn judge found the parties had already agreed to arbitration in California.
Irene Morales, 21, claimed the CEO held her captive in his Manhattan pad and forced her to perform sex acts on him, in a lawsuit filed a year ago.
But Justice Bernadette Bayne tossed the case from court and ruled that the allegations made by Morales be heard behind closed doors in arbitration.
The Judge agreed with the assertion of Charney’s lawyer that since a California court had already ordered the sexual harassment claim to arbitration, a New York court was unable to overrule it.
‘It took a while, but the right result was reached,’ attorney Stuart Slotnick told DNAinfo. ‘We’re happy to see that the frivolous claims are going to be heard in the proper venue.’
Morales’s claims have already been undermined by a trove of explicit pictures and messages she sent to her boss, which were made public during the contentious litigation.
She had alleged that the 43-year-old demanded that she send him ‘sexually explicit’ photographs, text messages and emails, which made her become so ‘nervous and depressed’ that she she suffered an emotional breakdown.
