Horatio Sanz accuser moves to add Jimmy Fallon, Tracy Morgan, and Lorne Michaels to sexual assault lawsuit
"Jane Doe" alleges that the Saturday Night Live creator and stars enabled Sanz's grooming when she was a teenager
Aux News Horatio Sanz
The woman who accused Horatio Sanz of sexual assault, known only as Jane Doe, has filed a motion to add Jimmy Fallon, Tracy Morgan, and Lorne Michaels to her lawsuit, according to Deadline. The filing argues that the trio enabled Sanz in his grooming and assault of Doe when she was only a teenager.
Doe was originally able to file her 2021 lawsuit against Sanz–which also listed NBCUniversal as a defendant–due to the New York’s Child Victims Act “lookback window,” which allowed her to take legal action regarding the assault that took place in the early 2000s. This new filing takes advantage of a similar law, the lookback window for expired civil claims of gender violence that is part of New York City’s Gender Motivated Violence Act. Per Deadline, Doe’s lawyers say these claims will be revived when the window opens on March 1, 2023.
Fallon was previously implicated in the suit as joining Sanz in originally reaching out to Doe via email when she was 15 years old. Speaking with The Daily Beast earlier this year, she recalled hanging out with Fallon at Saturday Night Live afterparties and speaking with him about her upcoming SATs. She also recalled being introduced to Michaels at an afterparty, where he gave her advice on beginning a writing career. Morgan, meanwhile, is identified in the new filing as having rented the space for the “after-after party” where “sex workers were part of the entertainment” and where Sanz allegedly assaulted the 17-year-old Doe in full view of onlookers. (Doe previously named SNL alums Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, Seth Meyers, Ana Gasteyer, and Maya Rudolph as witnesses to the assault, per The Daily Beast.)
“Sanz and his enablers lured Jane into their celebrity world and made her feel like a cool kid for drinking and partying with a bunch of famous grown-ups. Instead, they destroyed her life,” said Doe’s attorney Susan Crumiller in a statement (via Deadline). “Jane has spent the past two decades struggling with the repercussions of what they did to her; now it’s their turn. We look forward to holding NBC, Sanz, and everyone else who enabled this disgusting behavior accountable when the GMVA lookback window opens in March.”
NBCUniversal had previously filed to dismiss the suit on the grounds that the company was not responsible for Sanz’s conduct after hours. The dismissal was negated when Crumiller notified the court of her intention to amend the complaint, per Variety. In a new statement, an NBC spokesperson said, “Regardless of Jane Doe’s changing narratives, NBC intends to renew its motion to dismiss.”
In 2021, Sanz’s attorney released a statement calling Doe’s claims “categorically false.” Her original suit contains messages from the comedian as recently as 2019 in which he allegedly told her “If you want to metoo me you have every right.” Doe’s account of her experience for The Daily Beast–which includes descriptions of grooming and its repercussions on her mental health–is well worth reading, if you haven’t done so already.
86 Comments
Fuckin’ YIKES.
I see your YIKES and I raise you a OOOOOOOF.
Ripley’s “nuke the site from orbit” option may apply to the Earth, at this point.
I read this just after reading the racist AI-rapping robot lost its record deal, so I’m down.
the robot wasn’t racist, it was the fact somewhere in the production was a white guy. That makes everyone racist.
May?
I was being polite.
Here? Why?
It was my turn in the rotation.
Turn… rotation… I see what you did there.
To think, we might have been spared 20 years of SNL if this had gone forward earlier
But then we would have missed out on…I got nothing.
Lonely Island! The Californians, and…uh…
Herb Welch, Mango, Debbie Downer, the Vogelcheks
That’s what the SNL writers say most Saturday evenings.
Bill Hader?
Crucible Cast Party and the Olive Garden ad. Oh yeah, and the “Complicit” perfume ad.
The Actress and Papyrus, neither of which was live, and the better for it?
And Wells For Boys! Julio Torres is a special and unique snowflake of a comedic talent and must be protected.
It makes me so happy to now know that he (and Jeremy Beiler) wrote that one
David S. Pumpkins?
The Rock Obama was pretty damn funny. and the rock being Mr peepers dad was great when he was furiously humping chris parnell and his fake ear was flopping around.
The Diner Lobster sketch? And the increasingly ineffective attempts at recapturing the Diner Lobster sketch’s lightning in a different bottle?
John Mulaney?
Now here’s a hot take I’ve never heard before…
At first I was like that’s interesting, as I can’t really imagine Jimmy Fallon committing a sexual assault. But then I saw the claim was that he enabled it and immediately was like oh yeah I totally see that.I don’t quite see that Morgan would be responsible simply for renting a place where sex workers were present without any further connection to the victim or to Sanz’s behavior specifically. But obviously I only know what’s in this article, which is not likely to be all the facts.Anyway, I don’t feel surprised that Sanz is a creep.
Enabled it by existing as a bystander is going to be a tough sell. Sanz is a goner.
It says he (Fallon) participated by emailing her on Sanz’s behalf, so that’s not just being a bystander.
Hmm damn. I should probably read.
They say it is FUNdamental.
I don’t think they’ve said that since the 80’s when they bribed us with Pizza Hut to read books.
I say it all the time. But I really like free pizza, so that’s probably why.
Sure, but Pizza Hut?
i would be reading books today if they bribed me with pizza hut.
You call it a bribe, I call it an incentive to lie.
I always figured some kids were probably manipulating the system, but I was kind of a nerdy kid who was genuinely into reading. And, at the time, unfortunately, I was into Pizza Hut. I grew into a pretty well-read adult who know there’s better pizza in the world.
I went hard on Accelerated reader. The Pizza was an added bonus. I’d actually get pretty pissed at the kids I “knew” were lying. As an adult i realize it’s part of a toxic cycle meant to teach you to judge people based on assumptions.
No need to go crazy here!
That’s not what it says. The sentence was just written really weirdly.
“The biggest question of all is where are the parents at in these cases?”If you think that’s the biggest question of all I guess you have never been 15. The weird thing is that you don’t think the biggest question of all is how did this grown man and his buddy get away with creeping on a child for this long. Really the biggest question of all is why you think it’s reasonable to shift blame away from them and put it elsewhere.
The sentence is written weirdly, so not sure how you are so positive “what it says.” Mine is as reasonable an interpretation as any, but even if you take other interpretations the point stands that he’s not accused of being just a bystander (like Fey, Pohler, etc., are). He’s accused of participating in “courting” this girl.
“Fallon was previously implicated in the suit as joining Sanz in originally reaching out to Doe via email when she was 15 years old.”This is so vague it means nothing, I hope she still has that email…The biggest question of all is where are the parents at in these cases? Doe: “Hey mom it’s me, a pretty 15 year old girl, going to after parties with horny grown men, don’t know when I’ll be back”Doe’s mom: “That’s nice dear”
If you had told me before I read this article that Horatio Sanz died in 2016, I’d believe you.
That or was locked up for sexual assault in 2016.
Based on the linked article, there’s not much to go on there for anyone but Sanz.
He pleases people he thinks can get him things. And seems to have no backbone. Yeah, enabling almost anything seems reasonable.
Yeah he’s the high school sidekick who just wants to be next to whoever is the coolest person in the room (which was somehow Horatio Sanz?) and will go along with whatever and giggle about it.
Yeah Fallon I can totally see as liable, Morgan (as well as the other alumni, Michaels and NBC) feel like a stretch unless Tracy was at the door (not) carding people.
Weird that Tracy Morgan is perhaps the most blameless of the named parties.
Doesn’t seem weird to me, weirdly. He seems like the kind of guy who just wears his dysfunction on his sleeve. Like every skeevy thing there is to know about him we already know. I don’t feel he has skeletons.
I’m surprised Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch and Maya Rudolph were named as witnessing the assault.
Yes that is surprising and I’m not sure I believe it. I can believe it to the extent maybe they saw him hitting on her or whatever but not that they’d stand idly by if they knew she was 15. Maaaaaaybe Dratch, big maybe, but I can’t see it for Fey or Pohler or Rudolph. I guess possible if it was their first season or something and they didn’t want to make waves? Idk, even that would be a stretch.
And didn’t help apparently?This may destroy the love i have for the SNL girls.
Morgan, meanwhile, is identified in the new filing as having rented the space for the “after-after party”The string of after-after-after parties was a gag on a 30 Rock. Curious if there is a number of “afters” at which point NBC is off the hook.
After party, after the after party . . .
Doesn’t anybody ever just go home?
Anybody over 27, that’s worked on the show more than a year, and doesn’t have a drug problem probably goes home. Bill Hader told a story of being at one of the after parties and going outside because the impromptu jam session of Mick Jagger and Foo Fighters was too loud.
Surely at some point going to all the parties just becomes a different form of work.
The story about the after-after party with the sex workers is straight from Tracy Morgan’s memoir, where he says Sanz was the hardest partier and Morgan had to be called around noon the next day to come pick him up because he was still going.
A bunch of puffed up mid-20s egos hanging around the after-after party dazzling an in-awe 17 year old who feels cool. I bet it would curdle people’s milk to find out how common this is/was, both inside and outside of the celebrity world. Hell it was a mainstay of party films to come back home as a young adult and dazzle the high school girls.
So how did she do on her SAT’s?
OMG … I wish I could give you more than the one star I have to give…
Take your damn star
Well enough to know at least one polite synonym for “extortion,” I imagine.
Well this seems like very unethical behavior.
Anybody who laughs maniacally at NOTHING like Fallon does just had to be screwed up in other ways and finally: the truth prevails! LOL
I remember reading a while ago that he’s a blackout drunk
I’ve heard rumors of this, but understand that they are false.
All sympathy to the victim and Sanz is a pos but this maybe seems like stretch? I can maybe see Fallon but Tracy sounds like he just threw a party?
Well, at least this suit is finally getting a boost in attention.
In terms of criminal liability outside of Horatio Sanz, Fallon seems to be in the most trouble if he did help Sanz reach out to her.I don’t know that you can implicate Loren Michaels for having seen her somewhere. One, I don’t think he would be responsible for checking her ID and two, I’m sure there are other minors back stage who are friends/relatives etc. He has pretty plausible deniability. Same for Tracy Morgan and the others who seem to be bystanders who would have had limited knowledge of what was going on.
Sounds legit.
Who knows what’s really true, but all those names in there? I mean, this could be a BIG deal if it gains traction and goes to trial and even just some of these people had to testify in some way. Fallon, Meyers, Tina Fey? Major parts of the series, majorly important people in entertainment still today… and people who I don’t recall ever had much bad said about them.
You know what’s great about human beings nowadays? Leaping to assumption of guilt! Gotta love it! Now I will mute my comments so I don’t have to respond to the people who call me a groomer, scumbag, predator, and human shit for considering we wait and see what the truth is, because… fuck these Hollywood types, right?
Can we tap the brakes and get some additional facts and some real legal opinion here? All THIS story says is Fallon “reached out to her via e-mail”, Lorne Michaels offered career advice, and the SNL women witnessed a sexual assault. 1) What was in the e-mail, if that is even an actionable item regardless? 2) I guess Michaels is lumped in with the women as not having prevented a sexual assault (offering career advice is obviously no problem unless he’s suggesting making a sitcom in 2022) 3) What was it they supposedly witnessed? Unless Sanz was raping her in public they would have had to know she was underage to have suspected anything going on behind closed doors was illegal. And again, could someone with legal expertise chime in on legal liability in that instance? Since when are party attendees responsible for checking random ID’s and becoming legally culpable? Was there more damning detailed illegal behavior cited in the complaint that this story left out?
You expect context and nuance? On the internet? At the AV CLUB??
Reminding me of the Rolling Stone / UVA bogus rape case. When Jezebel covered it I wrote that the case was going to fall apart on legal merit. The witness’ story and behavior just weren’t adding up. Absolutely crazy inconsistencies with her own friends/witnesses refuting her.
Two hours later I was an Incel, a rape apologist, a rapist, a misogynist…
People go apeshit on these stories without any facts or legal grounding.
Jezebel is a fucking joke. They allow the same troglodytes to post the worst kind of racism and misogyny in the comments again and again and again. Yet I got perma-banned for asking why they repeatedly (and gleefully) shit on people for having mental disorders.
Many people have trouble differentiating between the moral and the legal. It’d be nice if they weren’t so different, but here we are…
I once mildly suggested that perhaps Alanis Morrisette wasn’t groomed and abused by Uncle Joey because she was already over the age of 18 when they met, and although I personally would never date an 18 year old woman when I was 31 myself (in fact a friend of mine started dating a 20 year old when we were 31 and I was like “dude, what the fuck” but that was 17 years ago and they are still together and have 3 kids so what the fuck do I know), I thought calling him an abuser of children as a result of their relationship was a bit of a stretch. After a not very long interval of time I was being called a pedo and a pedo apologist and hearing that I wanted to fuck teenagers and whatnot. It was insane. All I tried to say was that you have to draw the line somewhere but where was kind of arbitrary and as a result I was called a pedo. Fucking strange reasoning if you ask me but that’s how a lot of people seem to think
Americans in particular seem to have a fascination with misapplying the term “pedophile” to people. Having sex with a knowledgeable and possibly experienced 17 to 18 year-old (who could very well pass for anything from 17 to 27) is a FAR fucking cry from having sex with a prepubescent 7 year-old who hasn’t the faintest clue what sex is, or what it is that some manipulative perv is doing to them. There is a difference and that’s why those behaviors have names. The simple logic is that other 16 to 18 year-olds aren’t pedophiles for having sex with their peers, but Jesus Christ, you point this out and people lose their fucking minds.
All this info is in the amended complaint. Sanz was, in fact, grooming & sexually assaulting her in public, and his co stars were well aware of her age. Here: https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=kpJpOHYxMQTCdBdLDucPIg==&TSPD_101_R0=08533cd43fab2000a20030a3ba63c32048260d1fea2c2ad3c146b849d3a8198cd230d6bf2b7ec5e608316e43a5143000b56f92ba40f32c01ac49dc4055eddbb97add657602f956058ea4a179ef82c8f41f5207f53ed9530bb484a98ad32dfa18
I’ve discussed this with the closest thing I have to legal expertise (friends who work in law-adjacent professions like legal clerks and such) and bearing in mind that I live in the UK where the laws might be different, you could certainly bring the other names (Michaels, Fey, Dratch etc.) to court. The question as explained to me was, is it possible that they knew and did nothing? In other words, were they aware that Sanz’ girlfriend was under the legal age of consent or not? It’s not clear and certainly I wouldn’t have expected them to but you definitely have grounds to put them on the stand and try and find out.Again, this is just the advice of one or two people who’ve been around lawyers in a professional capacity in a different country to the lawsuit in question but I figured it was worth putting out there.
More liberals, yet again, being accused of acting inappropriately with children? Checks out.
While the majority of my brain acknowledges that this is awful and no child should have to deal with predators, celebrity or otherwise, there’s a small portion of my brain that hopes this is what takes Jimmy Fallon off the air. He’s so very mediocre bland guy. Whatever happens, I hope the young woman finds peace.
I find hard to believe the female cast members at a party with sex workers present let alone watching an assault happen in front of them. Unless they mistook the assault for a consentual encounter.