A defense that the company can offer is 'we intervened to prevent this in the following ways, senior management took this seriously and had a zero tolerance pol

A defense that the company can offer is 'we intervened to prevent this in the following ways, senior management took this seriously and had a zero tolerance policy, as you can see from the long list of people fired for doing bad things.' That is probably the most common defense for a suit like this. This is the main reason that companies provide annual harassment training, anonymous complaint lines, etc.- it helps to build the case that senior management takes the problem seriously in case a lawsuit like this is filed. The problem that A-B is going to have is that 'I complained to the CEO personally about Afrasiabi in 2013, and they didn't fire him until 2020' is tough to square with that argument. In order to make that stick you have to actually have consequences for employees who do this sort of thing. And 'we waited until after the investigation into our company had been going on for a year, almost a decade after his first documented complaint' doesn't really fit the facts the company wants. So, can they find enough people who did suffer consequences in 2013, say, to convince a jury? That's probably what the legal argument will come down to (their current tack is probably not the one they will take with a jury, presuming this gets that far).