Roberta A. Kaplan, a founder of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, said on Tuesday that she will represent Moira Donegan, the creator of a widely circulated list of “media men” accused of sexual misconduct. Ms. Donegan is the only named defendant in a lawsuit that was filed against her by Stephen Elliott, one of the men named on the list.
Mr. Elliott, a writer based in New Orleans, filed the lawsuit last week in the Eastern District of New York, asking for “no less than $1.5 million,” an additional $500,000, and written apologies from Ms. Donegan and other anonymous women who contributed to the list, which was created on a Google spreadsheet last year and spread rapidly in the 12 hours that it was live online.
In his suit, Mr. Elliott said that the claims about him on the list, which included “rape accusations” and “sexual harassment,” were false and defamatory, and that they had caused him significant professional and personal problems. He is being represented by Andrew T. Miltenberg, a lawyer who has worked on behalf of other men prominently accused of sexual misconduct.
The document, commonly known as the “shitty media men” list, created a stir in the industry and preceded the firings of eminent journalists. The men listed were said to have engaged in some form of sexual misconduct; their names were added, often from anonymous sources, through a crowdsourcing effort.
Ms. Donegan has said that she meant for the list to function as a digital “whisper network,” a way to warn women, who might not otherwise hear rumors about bad behavior, to avoid certain men.
In an essay for Quillette, Mr. Elliott denied the accusations, saying he was “shocked to find myself accused of rape” and that the list “derailed my life.”
Ms. Kaplan, a partner at Kaplan, Hecker and Fink, is most famous for representing Edith Windsor in United States v. Windsor, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act violated the constitution, a major victory for L.G.B.T.Q. rights.
In an interview on Tuesday, Ms. Kaplan said that she had taken Ms. Donegan’s case to fight what she saw as an effort to keep women from coming forward with claims about sexual misconduct.
“I and other women who are involved in Time’s Up have felt pretty strongly for a while that it would be really important not only to represent women who have been harassed or assaulted, but also to defend women in efforts that have been undertaken to stop women from speaking,” Ms. Kaplan said.
She noted that the standards for bringing a case for defamation are particularly high and difficult to meet in the state of New York and that it was hard for her to see how Mr. Elliott’s suit would pass a motion to dismiss.
“One can only surmise that the point of the lawsuit is to do something else, and again, my assumption is that the something else is to try to discourage other women from coming forward,” she said.
Ms. Kaplan has faced Mr. Miltenberg before. In 2016 she represented Columbia University in a lawsuit filed by Mr. Miltenberg’s client Paul Nungesser, who sued the university for supporting Emma Sulkowicz, a fellow student who accused Mr. Nungesser of rape. The case was settled in 2017.
And just as Mr. Miltenberg has begun to establish himself as a go-to lawyer for prominent men accused of misconduct in the midst of the #MeToo Movement, Ms. Kaplan has worked on behalf of accusers.
Earlier this month, the director Brett Ratner dropped a suit he had filed against her client Melanie Kohler, after Ms. Kohler had accused the filmmaker of sexual assault in a Facebook post last year. In that case too, Ms. Kaplan argued that Mr. Ratner was looking to intimidate women who spoke out more generally.
Not long after Mr. Elliott announced his lawsuit, Lauren Hough, a writer in Texas, created a GoFundMe for Ms. Donegan’s legal fees. So far, more than 2,400 people have donated and the campaign has raised almost $110,000.
In the description, Ms. Hough wrote that Ms. Donegan “did us all a huge favor.”
“She made our world safer, and has paid more than her share.” She added: “Now she’s going to need some help.”
Any remaining money, Ms. Hough wrote, will be donated to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.
Ms. Donegan’s case is currently being handled pro bono. (Funding from the Time’s Up organization requires an official application.) Ms. Kaplan said that she had been unaware of crowdfunded efforts to assist Ms. Donegan before taking the case, and that using that money would be “subject to discussion with Moira in the future.”
