James Van Der Beek is locked in a legal battle over a Dawson's Creek podcast that never ended up happening, and it seems as if it's only getting messier. After James sued SiriusXM when it allegedly failed to proceed with the podcast about the teen drama that he had signed on to host, the satellite radio company is now accusing James of destroying evidence and wants the case thrown out. But if James gets his way, he'll demand $700k from SiriusXM for breaching its contract with him.
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Last year, James sued SiriusXM over the scrapped podcast.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, in August 2022, James sued SiriusXM and Stitcher after the companies reneged on their agreement with the star to host a Dawson's Creek rewatch podcast. James claimed in the original lawsuit that the company had agreed to pay him a minimum of $700k to host 40 weekly episodes, along with 50% of the ad revenue.
At the time, he stated he was seeking $700k in damages to recoup the loss of income he said was promised to him.
Now, SiriusXM is fighting back.
The company is asking for the case to be thrown out in court, claiming that it never had a written agreement with James and that he was told multiple times that the idea for the podcast may never come to fruition, Radar Online reported.
As we know now, it never happened, and according to SiriusXM, it's because of creative and business reasons.
James is being accused of destroying evidence.
Reportedly, during a deposition that James gave in the case, he admitted to destroying evidence.
"Plaintiff James Van Der Beek acted with conscious disregard of his obligation to preserve documents and spoliated crucial emails related to this case. What’s more, Plaintiff failed to inform Defendants that he had destroyed evidence, and Defendants only learned about his spoliation at Plaintiff’s deposition," SiriusXM noted in court documents.
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Sirius XM is asking the court to 'impose monetary, exclusionary, and inference sanctions.'
In the deposition, James allegedly said, "I changed email servers over the summer and some of the emails I could not — I mean, unfortunately — I wish I knew what I was doing technically better than I did. And so I couldn't — for whatever reason I couldn't find any emails — I found some of the emails that I needed, but I didn’t see anything about these offers … Searching was – was difficult because of the server change … I didn’t change emails. I simply changed servers."
SiriusXM said James had a duty to preserve these documents but failed to take the "necessary steps to preserve relevant emails."
Company officials want James sanctioned $6,000.
So far, the judge has yet to rule in this case, but these are some pretty serious accusations being thrown around.
In the end, it really is a bummer that the Dawson's Creek podcast never got made — it would have been so much fun to listen to!
