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A wrongful death lawsuit was recently filed against Activision Blizzard by the family of an employee who died by suicide during a business trip. Now the victim’s parents are reportedly dropping the lawsuit they filed against their late daughter’s employer.
In 2017, 32-year-old Activision finance director Kerri Moynihan was found dead in her hotel room after ending her life during a company retreat. In March 2022, Moynihan’s family filed a wrongful lawsuit against the game publisher, claiming their daughter’s suicide was caused in part by gender-based harassment in Activision Blizzard’s allegedly toxic workplace. But now–just three months after filing the suit–Moynihan’s family have reportedly asked that the case be dropped.
On May 6, Paul and Janet Moynihan asked a California judge to drop the charges against Activision Blizzard with prejudice, meaning the company cannot be sued for wrongful death regarding Moynihan’s suicide again in the future. Both Activision and the Moynihan family’s legal representatives declined to comment on the request for dismissal.
In the initial lawsuit, Moynihan’s parents listed a number of events that they believe led to their daughter’s suicide (which was first referenced in California’s 2021 lawsuit against Activision-Blizzard), along with claims of police misconduct and Activision interfering with the investigation into their daughter’s death. The lawsuit made the following accusations:
Kerri Moynihan allegedly had a relationship with her boss, senior finance director Greg Restituito–a relationship that Moynihan’s family claimed Activision and Restituito attempted to hide in the wake of Moynihan’s suicide.Restituito asked odd questions about which employees had seen or spoken to Moynihan the day before her suicide, and left the company a month after her death.Activision claimed Moynihan’s phone had been wiped clean, something the victim’s family found extremely suspicious given the fact that she died while on a business retreat.Activision refused to hand over Moynihan’s laptop to investigators.One of Moynihan’s supervisors allegedly brought sex toys with him on a work trip where Moynihan would be present.
But perhaps the most horrific accusation of all is the claim that the main factor in Kerri Moynihan’s suicide was an incident that allegedly occurred shortly before her death, in which explicit nude photographs of Moynihan were shared amongst her male coworkers.
Activision Blizzard has largely shied away from making public statements on the Moynihan case, but the company did have a message for California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) in the immediate wake of the lawsuit that DFEH brought against Activision Blizzard in July 2021, which referenced Moynihan’s suicide:
“We are sickened by the reprehensible conduct of the DFEH to drag into the complaint the tragic suicide of an employee whose passing has no bearing whatsoever on this case and with no regard for her grieving family.”
The Moynihan family has not yet stated their reason for dropping the lawsuit.
