Janel Grant Lawsuit: Amended Complaint, Settlement, and Arbitration

The Janel Grant lawsuit is a federal civil case filed in January 2024 by a former WWE employee against Vince McMahon, WWE, and former executive John Laurinaitis, alleging sex trafficking, sexual assault, and coercion between 2019 and 2022. As of June 2026, Grant, McMahon, and WWE have jointly agreed to move the case out of public court and into confidential private arbitration, with a federal judge approving the shift and ordering the parties to finalize terms by July 10, 2026.¹

What Grant Alleged

Grant filed her complaint on January 25, 2024, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut (Case No. 3:24-cv-00090), before Judge Sarah F. Russell.² She named three defendants: McMahon, then executive chairman of TKO Group Holdings; WWE; and Laurinaitis, the former head of WWE Talent Relations.³

According to the complaint, Grant met McMahon in March 2019 through a neighbor in their shared apartment building. He promised her a WWE career, and she was hired that June as an entry-level coordinator in the legal department. Grant alleged her employment was conditioned on a sexual relationship with McMahon, that she was given minimal actual work, and that McMahon sent her a constant stream of sexually explicit messages.³

The complaint described escalating abuse: coerced sexual encounters at WWE headquarters during work hours, incidents involving physical violence, and a March 2021 transfer to Talent Relations under Laurinaitis. Grant alleged that in June 2021, both men sexually assaulted her inside Laurinaitis’s office, restraining her and forcing sexual acts on her while she begged them to stop.³

Grant further alleged she was trafficked to individuals inside and outside WWE, including a former UFC heavyweight champion, and that McMahon used her as leverage to recruit wrestling talent. The suit brought claims under the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act and sought a jury trial.³

The NDA at the Center of the Case

Much of the legal fight has turned on a nondisclosure agreement Grant signed on January 28, 2022. Under that agreement, McMahon promised Grant $3 million for her silence: an initial $1 million payment followed by four annual installments of $500,000. Grant said she received the first $1 million but that McMahon then stopped paying.⁴

The NDA designates binding arbitration as the “sole and exclusive legal method” for resolving disputes. McMahon and WWE repeatedly moved to enforce that clause. Grant resisted, arguing she signed under duress and invoking the federal Speak Out Act of 2022, which renders NDAs unenforceable in disputes involving sexual assault or harassment.⁴ McMahon’s attorneys countered that accepting the first $1 million ratified the contract, and that the Speak Out Act does not apply because McMahon denies any assault or harassment occurred.⁵

McMahon’s Denials and Resignation

One day after the lawsuit was filed, McMahon resigned as executive chairman and board member of TKO Group Holdings, effective immediately. It was his second departure in under two years. A 2022 board investigation had uncovered more than $12 million in payments to at least four women, prompting his first resignation as chairman. He returned in January 2023 to facilitate the sale of WWE, which merged with UFC to form TKO Group Holdings in a $21.4 billion deal.⁶

McMahon has denied every allegation. His legal team has characterized the relationship as consensual and lasting less than three years, and said McMahon holds evidence that Grant sent him sexually explicit messages and expressions of affection.⁴ His attorneys have called the complaint “false statements intended for publicity” and described Grant’s public filings as “tabloid-style” tactics.⁵

The Federal Criminal Investigation

Grant’s civil case has run alongside a federal criminal probe. In July 2023, agents served McMahon with a grand jury subpoena and executed a search warrant that seized his phone, as part of an investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.⁷

In May 2024, Grant agreed to stay the civil suit at prosecutors’ request to avoid interfering with the criminal probe. The court formally approved a six-month pause on June 11, 2024.⁸ When the stay expired in December 2024, prosecutors told Grant’s team they would allow the civil case to move forward.⁹

The status of the criminal probe itself remains disputed. McMahon’s attorneys have said the investigation “definitively concluded” without charges.¹⁰ In February 2025, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit referred to McMahon as “the subject of an ongoing grand jury investigation” while upholding the forced production of documents from his former law firm under a crime-fraud exception.¹¹ The Southern District of New York has declined to publicly confirm or deny the status of the probe.¹²

The Amended Complaint and April 2026 Affidavit

Grant filed an amended complaint on January 31, 2025, which the court formally allowed on May 7, 2025.¹³ McMahon’s lawyers opposed the amendment as “untimely” and a “bad faith” bid for leverage in “the court of public opinion.”⁵

In April 2026, Grant filed a 40-page affidavit adding specifics. She alleged McMahon tried to arrange sexual encounters between her and wrestler Brock Lesnar in 2021, and that Lesnar contacted her under the alias “Polish Joe,” requested explicit photos, and expected her to travel to other states. Grant said they never met in person.¹⁴ Representatives for Lesnar, McMahon, and WWE did not respond to requests for comment.¹⁵

The affidavit also alleged that WWE president Nick Khan offered in early 2022 to help Grant find work outside the company as McMahon grew worried the relationship would surface. Grant said Khan knew of the relationship but never asked whether she had consented, and she accused Khan and another executive, Brad Blum, of “surveilling my every move and enabling Vince’s abuse.”¹⁶

Laurinaitis Settles and Agrees to Cooperate

In May 2025, Laurinaitis reached a confidential settlement with Grant, and her claims against him were dismissed. As part of the deal, Laurinaitis agreed to cooperate with Grant’s legal team and provide evidence in her ongoing case against McMahon and WWE.¹⁷

The shift was significant. Before settling, Laurinaitis’s attorney had publicly stated that his client “corroborates Mr. McMahon in publicly declaring that Ms. Grant’s allegations of sexual abuse and coercion in her Complaint are completely unfounded.” McMahon’s attorney Jessica Rosenberg said Laurinaitis’s departure “doesn’t alter the facts of this case in any way” and reiterated that the allegations are “baseless.”¹⁷

The June 2026 Move to Arbitration

On June 11, 2026, Grant, McMahon, and WWE jointly asked the court to move the sex trafficking case into confidential private arbitration. It was a striking reversal for Grant, who had spent more than two years fighting to keep the case in public court. Judge Russell granted the request the next day and canceled a June 16 hearing that had been scheduled to address the defendants’ motions to compel arbitration.¹

The joint filing said the parties were in “active discussions regarding a potential agreement to arbitrate the dispute in confidential arbitration,” without explaining why Grant reversed her position. The court ordered a joint status report by July 10, 2026, and warned that if the parties could not agree on terms of arbitration by that date, a hearing would be required in August.¹ If arbitration proceeds, the case moves behind closed doors, ending the run of public filings that has driven media coverage since January 2024.

Related Cases Still Active

Several related matters sit outside the main lawsuit but connect to the same facts. Grant is pursuing a separate action in Connecticut state court over a medical clinic where she alleges McMahon directed her for treatment. She claims she visited Dr. Carlon Colker’s Peak Wellness clinic roughly 60 times between November 2019 and April 2022 and was given unidentified supplements and intravenous infusions, and her October 2024 filing also alleged that a Peak Wellness employee repeatedly sexually abused her.¹⁸ Rather than a full lawsuit, Grant filed a “bill of discovery” under Connecticut law to gather evidence. In August 2025, Judge David Bothwell ordered the clinic to turn over Grant’s medical and billing records but denied a request to depose Colker and his staff.¹⁹ Colker has denied the allegations and filed his own defamation suit against Grant’s attorney and her law firm in May 2025.²⁰

Separately, the SEC settled charges against McMahon in January 2025 for failing to disclose two hush money agreements he executed on behalf of WWE: a $3 million payment to a former employee in 2019 and a $7.5 million payment to a former independent contractor in 2022. The SEC found the undisclosed payments caused WWE to overstate 2018 net income by about 8% and 2021 net income by about 1.7%.²¹²²²³

A shareholder derivative lawsuit filed in Delaware Chancery Court in October 2023 alleged McMahon steered the 2023 WWE-Endeavor merger toward a deal that protected him from legal exposure rather than pursuing higher-value offers.²⁴ In late May 2026, Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster sanctioned McMahon and other WWE executives for destroying evidence through auto-delete settings on Signal, ruling the court would presume certain claims true, including that McMahon’s decision to merge with Endeavor was influenced by promises from Endeavor’s Ari Emanuel to keep McMahon in a leadership role and provide legal support regarding federal investigations.²⁵ A trial scheduled for June 8, 2026, was taken off the calendar amid reports of a potential settlement.²⁶

McMahon no longer holds any role with WWE or TKO Group Holdings.⁶

1
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Wrestlenomics. Pause on the Janel Grant Lawsuit Is for Six Months
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Yahoo News. Janel Grant Legal Team Issues Statement
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