He Was Accused of Reducing a Colleague to a 'Sexualized Stereotype.' Three Weeks Later, He's Out of the Lawsuit Entirely.

Three weeks ago, CBS News chief correspondent Matt Gutman was named as a defendant in a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by a former ABC News field producer. This week, without a word of public explanation, he was dropped from it entirely.

Samira Said, who worked as a field producer at ABC News, sued Gutman, ABC, The Walt Disney Company, and former ABC bureau chief David Herndon in Los Angeles Superior Court last month. Said alleged wrongful termination, discrimination, hostile work environment harassment, and retaliation. Specific to Gutman, she claimed that during an assignment, while the two waited in a public queue together, he initiated a conversation about another female correspondent's appearance — reducing that colleague's professional standing to what the suit described as a numerical score based on physical attributes. Said also said ABC later fired her after denying medical accommodations connected to trauma from covering the Uvalde school massacre.

Lawyers for Said filed paperwork asking that Gutman be dismissed from her complaint. The filing gave no stated reason. The dismissal was without prejudice, a legal designation that technically leaves open the possibility the claims against him could be refiled later, though nothing currently indicates that's planned. ABC and Disney remain named defendants, meaning the core of Said's case — her termination and the workplace conditions she says led to it — continues without Gutman as an individual defendant.

A dismissal without an explanation is genuinely ambiguous — it could reflect a private settlement between Said and Gutman specifically, a strategic legal decision to narrow the case against the two institutional defendants, or something else entirely. None of the parties' attorneys have offered public comment clarifying which.

Gutman joined CBS News as chief correspondent this past January, after nearly two decades at ABC News, where he had risen to chief national correspondent. IF Daily could not confirm a broadcast video specifically covering this dismissal at publication time; this account draws on reporting from Deadline, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and TMZ, cited below.