The plaintiff dropped the case himself and agreed to pay the other side's legal fees. That was the plan all along
Every so often a lawsuit arrives that seems built for the internet, and this one had all the ingredients: a household-name bank, an alleged office affair gone very wrong, and a plot twist – a junior man accusing a senior woman of coercion, drugging and threats – that scrambled the usual script. It went viral within days of being filed in the spring. Then it got messier. And on Thursday, it got dismissed. Sort of.
Justice Dakota Ramseur of the New York State Supreme Court threw out the state-court case brought by a former JPMorgan Chase vice-president in leveraged finance against the bank and his one-time colleague, Reuters reported. Here is the twist within the twist: the plaintiff asked for this dismissal himself and will now pay some of JPMorgan's and the accused’s legal fees for the privilege of walking away from his own lawsuit.
That is not, however, the end of it. The accused’s defamation countersuit against the former banker rumbles on in Manhattan, and his lawyers have made clear the plan all along was to ditch this case and come back swinging in federal court with something bigger, according to Reuters.
How we got here
Rewind to April 27, 2026. A complaint lands in New York County Supreme Court under the pseudonym "John Doe," accusing an executive director in the same leveraged finance unit, of using her seniority to pressure a subordinate into months of non-consensual sexual activity, Reuters and Audacy reported. It doesn't stop there. Reuters reported the filing alleges she drugged him, hurled racial slurs at him because he is of Asian descent, and threatened to torpedo his career if he didn't comply.
The executive director’s answer to all of it: none of it happened. Reuters reported her lawyers say she was never his supervisor, never used racial slurs and never threatened him. Her countersuit paints the former banker as someone who invented a story to attract maximum press and a maximum payout. JPMorgan told Audacy that its own internal investigation, which reviewed emails and phone records and interviewed employees, turned up no evidence to back the claims, and that the former banker himself declined to participate.
Somewhere in between those two accounts sits the actual truth, which no court has yet been asked to find.
Enter the internet
Because the accuser was a man and the accused a senior woman, the story was treated almost instantly as a gender-reversed harassment tale. AOL described it as one of Wall Street's most explosive recent scandals, spreading well beyond the legal trade press within weeks. Nobody involved needed the allegations to be proven, or even plausible, for the case to become a reputational headache with JPMorgan's name attached to it.
The legal choreography since then has been almost as chaotic as the allegations themselves. The former banker’s original lawyer tried to quit the case in May, leaving him briefly representing himself before a new five-lawyer team from Joseph & Norinsberg LLC picked it up in June, Bloomberg and LegalClarity reported. The new team decided the original complaint didn't go far enough and asked the court for permission to scrap it entirely so they could file a "comprehensive" version in federal court instead, according to LegalClarity.
JPMorgan and the accused cried foul, calling it forum shopping – a bid to ditch an unfavourable court for a friendlier one. The plaintiff’s new attorney, Jon Norinsberg, waved that off, framing it instead as the defence's habit of attacking the accuser to distract from the substance of the claims.
What's coming next
Reuters reported that the federal complaint the former banker’s team is preparing will add claims of discrimination and retaliation under multiple federal civil rights laws, plus a claim under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act. In other words: this isn't going away. A harassment allegation that started as a single, lurid state-court filing is about to arrive back on the docket wearing a discrimination claim, a retaliation claim and an FMLA claim as well.
So, the case that made headlines for being thrown out is, by its own plaintiff's design, coming back – bigger, in a different courtroom, and very much still attached to JPMorgan's name.
