At 48, Mr. Wigdor has found himself as the courtroom general leading an army of Fox complainants largely because of his reputation as one of New York City’s most aggressive employment lawyers. During his career, he has filed gender discrimination suits against Deutsche Bank and Citigroup (both of which, like many of his lawsuits, were settled without a claim of liability), and an age and racial bias suit against The New York Times. In June, he sued Uber, alleging that officials at the company illegally sought the medical records of a woman who claimed she was raped by an Uber driver in India. (An Uber spokesman has apologized that the plaintiff had to “relive” the experience.) And in 2013, after he sued SoulCycle, charging that the indoor cycling studio had cheated an instructor out of his wages, the company banned him from all of its locations. So he sued over that, too, and lost.

But despite the fact that he has repeatedly taken on corporate giants, Fox may be his toughest target yet. In February, the network fired Judith Slater, the former comptroller, who is accused of racial animus by many of his clients. The network since maintained that Mr. Wigdor’s lawsuit naming Ms. Slater was “needless” and that his follow-up amended suits were “copycat complaints.” In April, days before one of those amended suits was filed, Mr. Wigdor said that Fox’s lawyers threatened to “seek sanctions” against him if his new plaintiffs went public with their claims. (A lawyer for Ms. Slater said that Mr. Wigdor’s claims against her “rely on false allegations” and were nothing more than a “money grab.”)

The threats have not just come from Fox itself. This spring, Mr. Wigdor held a televised news conference in which he announced additional plaintiffs in an expanding racial bias suit against Fox. Minutes after the event was aired, the police said a man called his office threatening to blow it up. When the man called back, Mr. Wigdor got on the phone with him. Mr. Wigdor said the man called him a “nigger lover,” adding he was going to kill him and his family. Mr. Wigdor called the police, who eventually identified the caller as Joseph Amico, a computer repairman from Las Vegas.

Within three weeks, two New York detectives had traveled to Las Vegas to arrest Mr. Amico, but a standoff ensued when he refused to leave his home. After several hours, a local SWAT team broke into the house and found Mr. Amico in the attic.

Mr. Amico’s lawyer, Todd Spodek, said his client would fight the charges. “In this political climate,” Mr. Spodek said, “people are so worked up about the issues that it’s very easy for words to be misunderstood and hysteria to take place.”



Slim and sinewy, with a disarmingly focused gaze, Mr. Wigdor says he has always had a passion for competition. He is a regular tennis player (and claims that while in law school he gave lessons to Alan Greenspan, a future chairman of the Federal Reserve). He bikes each day from his home in Forest Hills, Queens, to his law firm on lower Fifth Avenue. While working on a master’s degree at Oxford University, where he met his wife Catherine, he played starting point guard on its 1995 national champion basketball team.