Ex-‘Idol’ Contestant Corey Clark Loses $40M MTV Lawsuit

Remember this guy, Corey Clark, from American Idol?  Well, he was disqualified as a contestant on American Idol and later achieved notoriety for claiming to have had an affair with then-Idol judge Paula Abdul. And apparently, he is still pissed off at the treatment he’s received in the media.

According to Billboard.com, Clark filed a lawsuit against MTV for defamation, but has lost the $40 million suit against pop culture cable network and its parent company Viacom.

He sued in July 2012 over various statements published by an MTV reporter, mostly to the effect that he had been disqualified from the singing competition series after concealing from producers an arrest involving an alleged assault on his sister. In the lawsuit against MTV, he later was joined by ex-Idol contestant Jaered Andrews who was also unhappy with the characterizations of his own disqualification.

Unfortunately for both, neither of them have been able to survive the standards necessary to prevail on a defamation claim.

 

Clark was reported at various times to have been “disqualified for lying about a hairy domestic dispute,” “booted for concealing his arrest record on battery charges,” and “booted for not disclosing his rap sheet.”

 

U.S. District judge William Haynes writes in his opinion that these statements are “comments upon or characterizations of published facts,” and thus not actionable as libel. The Tennessee judge also points out that the characterizations were reported by other reputable news organizations including The Tennessean, the Boston Herald, Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer, the Chicago Sun-Times and People magazine.

 

As for Andrews, who objected to a report that he was “sent home over undisclosed assault charges,” the judge nods to the fact that he admitted he was in fact “charged with one misdemeanor account of ‘simple assault.’ ” As such, the judge says that the statement is true, and even if it is injurious to his reputation, it’s not actionable.

Read more over at Billboard.com.