Hajdini doesn’t just answer the complaint — she files her own, and now JPMorgan is stuck between two live defamation clocks. This is Banker Sexual Harassment Lawsuit Watch — I’m Cassidy, and the case just changed shape: one plaintiff, one defendant, and now both sides are suing in separate courts. I’m Brian. And that “eerily similar prior claims” line JPMorgan’s exec is hanging his hat on? That’s not a clean defense — it’s a prior-bad-acts fight, and it just made discovery uglier for everybody in that building. New York Magazine broke the counterclaim filing — state court, not federal — and that venue choice is the first thing we need to unpack. New York Magazine, with Bess Levin:
Lorna Hajdini, the banker accused of sexual abuse by her former JPMorgan colleague, has fired back with a lawsuit of her own, claiming that Chirayu Rana fabricated his allegations against her, including that she made him her “sex slave.”
New York Magazine has the filing — Hajdini went to New York State Supreme Court on Tuesday, not federal, not EEOC. That means a different docket, different discovery rules, and different defamation damages than you’d see in a federal employment case. Yesterday we were on the denials; today there’s an actual pleading on the other side of the ledger. State court looks deliberate. Her lawyers picked that venue for a reason — probably because they think they can prove what was said and where, and they want New York state procedure when they start digging. Now both sides have live defamation exposure, and JPMorgan is sitting in the middle while two people call each other liars in two courts at once. That “eerily similar prior claims” framing from JPMorgan’s defense matters. It’s a pattern-of-conduct argument, and in New York state court it’s handled differently than Rule 404(b) under the Federal Rules of Evidence. Whether any of that prior-acts material reaches a jury depends on a state standard most people aren’t watching. And here’s the part I’m stuck on with that “eerily similar” line — did JPMorgan’s lawyers surface it, or did Hajdini’s own countersuit hand them a credibility attack by putting Rana’s pattern of allegations on the record? Because if it’s the second one, that’s a pretty bad own-goal. If you’re tracking cases step by step, try Arcadia Mayor Spy Watch, our daily court-watch on the federal foreign-agent prosecution of former Arcadia mayor Eileen Wang and the related Mike Sun case. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
You’ll find links to every story we covered today in the show notes, so if one of them deserves a closer read, that’s the place to start.
That’s Banker Sexual Harassment Lawsuit Watch for this Thursday, May 21st. This is a Lantern Podcast.