Arrowood LLP Wins $6 Million Defamation Verdict for Dr. David Sabatini

10/19/2026

Arrowood LLP attorneys Lisa G. Arrowood, Jed DeWick, Sarah E.A. Sousa and Shayne Kinsella, along with paralegals Avery Emison and Cam Harding, won a $6 million jury verdict in Suffolk County Superior Court on behalf of world-renowned biologist and former MIT professor Dr. David Sabatini in his defamation case against a former colleague.

“There’s an old saying that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its shoes on,” Ms. Arrowood told the jury in her closing argument. “That’s what’s happened to David Sabatini.”

In 2018, Dr. Sabatini was an MIT professor, Principal Investigator (PI) at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), Member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research (Whitehead), and promising candidate for a Nobel Prize. That same year, he and Dr. Kristin Knouse, a fellow at Whitehead, began a consensual sexual relationship.

In 2019, when Knouse proposed that they become life partners, Sabatini rejected her offer, saying that he was seeing another woman. In 2020, Knouse began telling colleagues at Whitehead and MIT that Sabatini had assaulted her, calling him a rapist, a sexual predator, and the “Weinstein of science.” She reported her allegations of sexual harassment to Whitehead Director Dr. Ruth Lehmann who took steps to fire Sabatini, leveraging subsequent complaints filed by Knouse’s allies and anonymous DEI survey responses as grounds to launch an outside investigation into Sabatini’s laboratory.

In 2021, based on the investigators’ report, Whitehead’s Board of Directors voted to authorize Sabatini’s termination. Lehmann announced to the Whitehead community that Sabatini had violated “the Institute’s policies on sexual harassment.” Sabatini resigned from Whitehead, was terminated by HHMI, and placed on leave by MIT.

Knouse continued to defame Sabatini and mobilized others to undermine his prospective relationships and opportunities. Branded a “sexual harasser,” Sabatini’s consulting and advisory positions were terminated almost overnight and, in 2022, an offer for a faculty position at NYU Langone evaporated amid protests. Because of Knouse’s statements, Sabatini became a pariah among the scientific community.

Sabatini sued Knouse, Lehmann, and Whitehead in 2021, and Knouse counterclaimed for, inter alia, sexual harassment. Years of hard-fought motion practice followed. Lehmann and the Whitehead were dismissed at summary judgment.

Over the course of the three-week trial, the jury saw a detailed accounting of Knouse and Sabatini’s relationship, including intimate text messages as well as Knouse’s communications with third parties about Sabatini and her desire to get him fired and ejected from the scientific community.

On October 16, 2026, the jury of seven women and six men found that Knouse defamed Sabatini and tortiously interfered with his contractual and prospective advantageous relationships, rejected all of her counterclaims, and awarded him $6 million in damages, amounting to nearly $10 million with interest.

Calling the verdict a moment of sweet justice, Ms. Arrowood said, “The jurors found that David Sabatini did not sexually harass Kristin Knouse and that she defamed him by calling him a sexual predator. Dr. Sabatini is so grateful that a jury of his peers had all the facts and spoke the truth in their verdict.”

“The MeToo movement began with women coming forward about Harvey Weinstein and his multiple rapes and assaults,” said Ms. Arrowood. “It has helped change lives, but that movement is not meant to be turned into a weapon by a woman who welcomed a sexual relationship with a man, who sought it out, and then used that movement and its worthy goals to destroy a man because he chose another woman.”

The verdict has drawn national media attention. Read more about the case in these articles:

 

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