Greta Van Susteren and Bill O’Reilly have been sued by a business owner from New York for emotional distress and defamation. The owner of Drum Café, Aviva Nash, filed the lawsuit against the hosts from Fox News because the hosts accused Nash of stealing from taxpayers in the U.S.
Nash filed the lawsuit because of two segments that ran during the show ‘On The Record,’ hosted by Van Susteren, and ‘The O’Reilly Factor,’ hosted by O’Reilly. The two segments aired back in the month of July. The segments on the shows featured an investigation of an awards banquet for General Services Administration that cost over $250,000.
During the two shows, video clips were shown featuring drumming because the awards banquet featured drumsticks for the 4,000 people in attendance. This cost $21,000 for all of the drumsticks handed out to guests. Nash, in the lawsuit, alleges that video footage of her company was featured in the segments on the two shows. Neither Nash nor her company, Drum Café, was named in the footage. During their segments, O’Reilly and Susteren criticized the GSA because it used taxpayer money for the banquet.
Van Susteren issued a written statement about the lawsuit on Thursday. Van Susteren said that she has yet to be served papers and the network was not served either.
“If the lawyer and his client simply send a letter apologizing for filing the lawsuit and if they dismiss the lawsuit against me, I won’t Rule 11 their case,” Van Susteren wrote in a statement. She also offered a copy of the transcript from her show on July 19 with the segment highlighted to prove that it was not talking about Nash and her company.
“It is hard to figure out why [Nash] feels harmed having not been named or identified. We didn’t even know her. We had no reason to name her. This was not about her,” Van Susteren wrote.
