Seinfeld: Suit Doesn’t Have a Leg to Stand-Up On
Jerry Seinfeld is wondering how a show about nothing has turned him into an “actor.”
Lawyers for the former sitcom star have asked that a defamation lawsuit brought against him by a steamed cookbook author be tossed out on First Amendment grounds, arguing that any statements she perceived to be derogatory were made while he was in comedian mode.
Missy Chase Lapine, author of The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals, has accused Jessica Seinfeld of swiping her methods for getting kids to eat vegetables and her funny hubby of slandering her during an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman in October.
Noting that the plaintiff was accusing his wife of committing “vegetable plagiarism” in her book Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food, Seinfeld told Letterman that Lapine being a “three-name woman” worried him.
“If you read history, many of the three-name people do become assassins. Mark David Chapman and, you know, James Earl Ray. So, that’s my concern.”
None of which Lapine took lightly when she added a defamation charge to the copyright-and-trademark-infringement lawsuit she filed against the Seinfelds in January (after Jerry had made those comments).
But while she referred to Seinfeld as a comedian in her original complaint, in a revised suit filed several weeks Lapine stated: “Jerry Seinfeld is an enormously wealthy and well-known actor.”
Seinfeld’s lawyers beg to differ, considering he was expected to be funny when he was a guest on the Late Show.
“No reasonable viewer could have thought that Seinfeld really meant that Lapine…might become an ’assassin’ simply because she has three names,” state court documents filed Tuesday in response to Lapine’s suit.
QUOTED: Jessica Seinfeld’s Trendy Toddler
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Seinfelds respond to cookbook author’s lawsuit
Well, Jerry and his wife have finally responded to cookbook author Missy Chase Lapine’s lawsuit.
Lapine sued the Seinfelds after Jerry went on The Late Show with David Letterman and said some rather nasty things about her, including calling her a “wacko” and suggesting she was a stalker (even making a joke about her having three names, like killers often do). This also stems from the incredible similarities between Lapine’s hide-your-veggies book The Sneaky Chef (released in April of 2007) and Jessica Seinfeld’s hide-your-veggies Deceptively Delicious (released in October of 2007).
The response from Seinfelds’ attorneys says that his comments on Letterman’s show were “overstatements of opinion for comic effect” and that Lapine’s accusation of copyright infringement are “trivial and unprotectable aspects.” Something tells me this fight is going to go on for a while.
If Jerry still had his show he’d probably do an episode based on this.