Parents of video game maker employee who took own life drop lawsuit

Activision offices in 2008. | Photo courtesy of Coolcaesar/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The parents of an Activision Blizzard employee who took her own life at an Anaheim hotel in 2017 during a work retreat dropped their lawsuit against the Santa Monica-based video game maker.

Jeffrey B. Isaacs, a lawyer for plaintiffs Paul and Janet Moynihan — the parents of the late Kerri Moynihan — filed court papers on Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court asking that their lawsuit be dismissed “with prejudice,” meaning it can’t be revived later.

The court papers did not state if a settlement was reached or if the Moynihans were not pursuing the case for other reasons. Isaacs and Activision lawyer David H. Fry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The 32-year-old Kerri Moynihan was found dead at Disneyland’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa on April 27, 2017.

“Activision fostered and permitted a sexually hostile work environment to exist in which female employees were routinely sexually harassed, belittled, disparaged, and discriminated against, and Activision failed and refused to take corrective action or reasonable steps to prevent that harassment,” the suit filed March 3 alleged.

Four years after Kerri Moynihan’s death, evidence surfaced that she was subjected to “brutal workplace sexual harassment at Activision that was a substantial factor in causing her death by suicide while at the Activision retreat,” according to the suit.

Kerri Moynihan was the couple’s only child, the suit states.

“They have been devastated by Kerri’s death,” the suit further states.

Last July, the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against Activision, detailing a “shocking pattern of workplace sexual harassment and discrimination,” the Moynihan suit states.

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