A four-year legal battle between a former Golden Globes voter and the organization that once awarded Hollywood's glitziest trophies has quietly come to an end. Husam “Sam” Asi filed to settle and dismiss his lawsuit against the Hollywood Foreign Press Association with prejudice in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday, closing out a case built on allegations of sexual harassment, discrimination and breach of contract.
The terms of the settlement were not disclosed, according to the Los Angeles Times, which first reported the dismissal. An HFPA spokesperson said the organization had resolved its litigation with Asi on mutually agreeable terms and wished him well, while Asi himself was not immediately available for comment, per the same report.
Asi represented the United Kingdom and the Middle East for the HFPA from 2010 to 2022, working as a Palestinian journalist for BBC Arabic and as a columnist for Al-Quds Al-Arabi, the Times noted. He sued the organization in May 2022, three months after the HFPA placed him on probation.
Allegations and Denials on Both Sides
That probation followed allegations of sexual misconduct first reported by TheWrap, whose February 2022 investigation detailed claims from three women, including a former assistant who alleged Asi showed her pornography and kissed her without consent. Asi strongly denied the allegations at the time, calling them absurd and baseless. The HFPA board later voted to formally expel him from the organization effective August 27, 2022, after an outside law firm completed its own investigation, TheWrap reported.
In his lawsuit, Asi alleged the HFPA used the sexual misconduct claims against him in retaliation for his efforts to hold the organization accountable, per the Los Angeles Times. He claimed he endured sexual harassment, hostile behavior, racial epithets, discrimination and retaliation that were never properly investigated or handled under HFPA bylaws, and said the organization announced his probation without informing him first, contrary to its own rules. The HFPA denied Asi's claims. According to the Los Angeles Times, Asi had confronted the organization during a 2020 internal meeting following the murder of George Floyd, telling members he had never encountered as many racist comments in any other organization — a moment he maintained in his lawsuit made him a target for leadership retaliation.
Years of Procedural Fighting
The case wound through years of procedural skirmishes. The HFPA filed an anti-SLAPP motion in July 2022 seeking to strike nine of Asi's 14 causes of action, which a Los Angeles Superior Court judge denied that year. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge, Michael L. Stern, separately dismissed Asi's claim for negligent infliction of emotional distress in December 2022, ruling he had failed to show the HFPA's press releases caused him direct or indirect injury, according to MyNewsLA.com. At that stage, Stern allowed Asi's claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress, breach of contract and unfair business practices to move forward.
California's Second District Court of Appeal then reversed much of the lower court's decision in October 2023, granting the HFPA's motion to strike seven of Asi's 14 causes of action. The appellate panel found that HFPA press releases about its internal misconduct inquiries were protected speech under California's anti-SLAPP statute, according to Latham & Watkins LLP. More recently, the HFPA filed another motion in August to dismiss Asi's complaint for failure to comply with court orders and said it planned to seek an order deeming him a vexatious litigant, with a contempt hearing scheduled for November, per court docket records cited by the Los Angeles Times.
A Transformed Organization Facing Bigger Legal Fights
Asi's case unfolded alongside a sweeping transformation of the Golden Globes itself. The HFPA's reckoning began in 2021, when NBC dropped its broadcast of the 2022 ceremony after a Los Angeles Times investigation found that none of the HFPA's then 87 members was Black, prompting Netflix and WarnerMedia to cut ties with the group. Todd Boehly, the billionaire chairman of Eldridge Industries, acquired the Golden Globes in 2023, dissolving the nonprofit HFPA and converting the awards show into a for-profit enterprise — a deal finalized when Dick Clark Productions and Eldridge Industries completed the acquisition of the Golden Globe Awards' assets, according to Penske Media Corporation.
That same overhaul is now at the center of a far larger legal fight. Original founding HFPA members filed a federal antitrust lawsuit in July against Jay Penske, Penske Media Corporation, the Golden Globe Foundation and others, alleging the Golden Globes acquisition was a sham process tainted by fraud and seeking at least $150 million in damages, according to AP News. The complaint claims Penske Media used its trade publications to fuel a public boycott that forced a discounted sale of the awards show. Penske Media holds market dominance over major Hollywood trade outlets including Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, Rolling Stone, Billboard and IndieWire, as well as live awards programs like the American Music Awards and Streamy Awards, according to the A.V. Club.
Legal commentators analyzing the federal case in July suggested the HFPA faces steep hurdles, as courts may view the group's past ethical scandals and its own member vote approving the sale as undercutting claims that the deal was coerced. Attorney Bryan M. Sullivan noted that the three-year gap between regulatory approval of the sale and the lawsuit's filing weakens arguments that the takeover was involuntary, according to analysis published by Early Sullivan and reported by TheWrap. Asi's now-settled individual claims and the HFPA's broader antitrust fight remain legally distinct, even as both trace back to the same organization's turbulent, multi-year unraveling.
