New York – Longtime CBS anchor Dan Rather filed a $70 million lawsuit Wednesday against his former employer, alleging that network executives broke the terms of his contract by marginalizing him in his final days at CBS News and forcing him to retire early.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in New York State Supreme Court, comes as a startling postscript to the saga that dominated the news division three years ago, when a political furor erupted over a piece Rather anchored about President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard, later found to be based on unsubstantiated documents.
In the wake of the controversy, a producer was fired and three executives were forced to resign. Six months later, Rather stepped down from the anchor chair of “CBS Evening News,” a year shy of his 25th anniversary in the job.
His lawsuit contends that CBS and its former parent company, Viacom, violated terms of his contract and sought to tarnish his reputation and restrict his abilities to seek work in order to contain the story’s political fallout.
According to the complaint, “Central to defendants’ plan to pacify the White House was to offer Mr. Rather as the public face of the story, and as a scapegoat for CBS management’s bungling of the entire episode – which, as a direct result, became known publicly as ‘Rathergate.”‘
CBS said in a statement, “These complaints are old news and this lawsuit is without merit.”
