Reporter says conduct did not amount to sexual harassment or serious misconduct
Former Seven Network reporter Robert Ovadia has rejected as “baseless” accusations from 13 women about his conduct since he was terminated in June, according to reports.
Ovadia was fired following allegations of "inappropriate behaviour," which he challenged by filing a wrongful dismissal claim against Seven Network and Seven West Media's news and editor-in-chief, Anthony De Ceglie, The Guardian reported.
During the first case management hearing on Thursday, the counsel for Seven said they had email evidence of complaints about Ovadia's conduct from 13 more women.
"The applicant has been put on notice of that. That is, my instructors have written to our learned friend's instructors, setting out the additional allegations that have come to light subsequent to the dismissal and to the extent that those allegations are recorded in documents," said Vanja Bulut, counsel for Seven, as quoted by The Guardian.
But court documents later filed with the Federal Court revealed that Ovadia dismissed the allegations from the other women as "baseless."
According to the documents, Ovadia was accused of creating edited photos and a caricature of "Person A" and sending them to that person.
"The conduct of the Applicant did not amount to sexual harassment," the statement of claim said as quoted by ABC News.
Ovadia also allegedly sent a photo of a flaccid penis that was copied from the internet to another colleague. But this also did not amount to serious misconduct, the document claimed.
According to the document, the action was not "of a sexual nature" and was not offensive, humiliating, nor intimidating to the colleague who received it.
"No reasonable employer could have formed form the view that the conduct amounted to sexual harassment, the photo was not conduct of a sexual nature," the statement of claim said, as quoted by The Guardian.
Federal Court Justice Elizabeth Raper has ordered both parties to attend in-person mediation in October.
This will be the second mediation between both parties, after they attended a Fair Work Commission mediation around six weeks ago, which failed.
