Jerry Seinfeld Fights Back At Defamation Suit

NEW YORK — Jerry Seinfeld claims a cookbook author is cooking up some fancy semantics by calling him an actor rather than a comedian to minimize the humor in statements she says defamed her.

Lawyers for Seinfeld say Missy Chase Lapine's lawyers resorted to the switch in words to describe Seinfeld when several weeks ago they filed a rewritten version of her lawsuit against him and his wife in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

"Jerry Seinfeld is an enormously wealthy and well-known actor," Lapine's revised lawsuit said. The original had called him a comedian.

Lapine, the author of "The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals," accused Seinfeld's wife, Jessica Seinfeld, of plagiarizing her cookbook when in October she published her own, titled: "Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food."

During an appearance on CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman," Jerry Seinfeld said Lapine was accusing his wife of "vegetable plagiarism" and compared her to the three-name killers of John Lennon and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

"If you read history, many of the three-name people do become assassins," Seinfeld said. "Mark David Chapman. And you know, James Earl Ray. So that's my concern."

His lawyers said in court papers filed late Tuesday: "No reasonable viewer could have thought that Seinfeld really meant that Lapine ... might become an `assassin' simply because she has three names."

Lapine's lawyers have said Seinfeld, best known for the sitcom "Seinfeld," used the Letterman appearance to begin a "malicious, premeditated and knowingly false and defamatory attack" on her.

"The issues of law will be decided by the court, and we are confident of the outcome," Lapine lawyer Howard B. Miller said Wednesday.

Seinfeld's lawyers asked a judge to toss out the lawsuit on First Amendment grounds.

In separate court papers, lawyers for Jessica Seinfeld accused Lapine of falsely claiming she invented the idea of hiding fruits and vegetables in children's meals when "countless prior works utilized this very same unprotectable idea," including a 1971 book. They called the lawsuit "opportunistic."

Comments

[lolyla]

11:29 PM on 06/22/2008

He's got a point. He really isn't much of an actor and never pretended to be. The vegetable plagiarist accuser should retreat because Jerry Seinfeld is obviously not going to roll over and settle out of court to avoid negative press. He's made this personal. He has the money to litigate her into bankruptcy, and the time and patience to do it.

[slobone]

11:26 PM on 06/22/2008

He's a big friggin billionaire bully. He can go on Letterman and say anything he wants. And his wife is guilty as hell. I hope she has to pay every penny she made on the book plus punitive damages.

Since the Seinfeld show went off the air, it's more and more obvious that Larry David deserves all the credit for its success. What has Seinfeld done since then except some very unfunny standup?

[SlippingInTheDip]

05:43 AM on 06/22/2008

Rodney Dangerfield years ago had a comedy show that young comedians used to get ahead. Jerry Seinfeld was on it a few times and he wasnt funny as a comedian. His show, Seinfeld was great and he was a good actor...

[sa]

10:42 AM on 06/21/2008

maybe he shouldn't a stolen
another man's wife out of a gym.

(whoops - did i just write that, or think that?
holy christ, i'm about to click "Post a Comment")

.

[dm92]

08:42 PM on 06/20/2008

He sounds like a creep, but he is still the FATHER of their children - she should think about them as she presses to get this data public - her children may hate her for that one day. People always forget that the children's relationship with the estranged spouse is different from theirs.

[escobar]

10:06 AM on 06/20/2008

He is a clown, what is he supposed to do?
Should he get all seroius and change his demeanor over a foolish cook book his wife published?
What a downer that would be for Letterman's show.
He was joking in as silly and unfeeling a way as the character he developed for TV, as the audience would hope to see.
The families of the victims of those killers should be more offended since he gives not one whit for thier loss but includes the killers names in a joke about his wife's situation, but that is the joke. His show did end with the gang in jail for voilation of the Good Samaritian law.
The controversy will draw curiousity to two books that would very well just get ignored.
If one were to look at both they could decide which they like better.
I think it is all a marketing plan.
If Jerry's wife used the same book and only changed the cover she is in trouble.
There are plenty of cook books in any Public Library that are likely much better but they are not in the news.

[vocalist]

07:58 AM on 06/20/2008

All the fame made Jerry full of it. Lately saw him on LK etc. he came out as an obnoxous unbearabe human being.
Jerry, take a lessen from Alan Alda, MASH was bigger than Seinfield, but Alda was an actor and now apears to be so humble.

[jckamaraj]

08:11 PM on 06/20/2008

it is just a perspective. i never watched MASH, so never heard of Alda. i didn't know that MASH was bigger than seinfeld till you told me. but i like Seinfeld show. he might have appeared insensitive when all he wanted was to make a joke(which we all do as we try to make a joke and end in an awkward position)

[AngelicDevilboy]

06:17 AM on 06/20/2008

I don't really understand your whole legal system, so I won't comment. But between "Curb your enthusiasm'" and the new "bee movie". I think we all know who the real genius behind "Seinfeld" was.
That's all I wanted to say.

Oh and...
I bet it's the same publisher who publish both books. This is just the same publicity stunt they did with the DaVinci code.

[JamieStarr]

05:57 AM on 06/20/2008

I hear that Crazy Joe Davola is suing for defamation as well.

[BongHitsForJesus]

09:27 PM on 06/19/2008

Jerry Seinfeld also accused her of having man hands.......not that there's anything wrong with it.

[dawlishgal]

07:03 PM on 06/21/2008

LOL. At least he didn't accuse her of going out in public in just a bra.

[swingerofbirches]

07:38 PM on 06/19/2008

Seinfeld was out of his mind on Letterman. It was visibly uncomfortable for Letterman.

Oprah is half cool / half out of her mind. How can she have a Daoist, peaceful podcast one day and another be screaming at James Frey over the misclassification of literature?

[InformedSources]

11:03 PM on 06/19/2008

Good point.

[vocalist]

08:00 AM on 06/20/2008

yes

[normathumb]

04:35 PM on 06/20/2008

"Pieces" is much more tabloid then literature. And when the author calls fiction fact, it is a bit disingenuous to refer to it simply as "misclassification". Frey made up a bunch of stories and said they were true when he knew they weren't. It wasn't just printed on the binding of the book. He made a celebrated, triumphant tour, basking in the adulation of the hoodwinked. The irony is he could be a better then decent writer. He had no faith in himself. My guess is the book succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Had it only been modestly recieved, he probably would never have been exposed.
Of course, this, all, begs the question; what has this to do with Seinfeld and his issues.

[amorosotom]

07:18 PM on 06/19/2008

Here's what intrigues me. How people are always so quick to come to the defense of the rich. Jerry Seinfeld is a billionaire. That's with a B. And what the hell is he banging heads with some poor woman whose idea was ripped off by his trophy wife. Hey, people are so quick to trash the lady for defending her work . Check with Walt Disney if you want to see the power of copyrights. The Mouse has been known to crush anyone that even slightly borrows from their stories . Funny thing though. Walt Disney stole most of their ideas from fairy tales and public domain.

[CKieffer]

06:41 PM on 06/19/2008

So, if Seinfeld was well within his rights to say these things about this other woman; then one must ask: why wasn't Imus given the same courtesy?

[vocalist]

08:01 AM on 06/20/2008

well said

[KOBISKING]

06:26 PM on 06/21/2008

Get over it already!

[jmyoung666]

04:50 PM on 06/19/2008

This is not a patent case, it is a copyright infringement case. You cannot copyright ideas, just expression. (For a work of fiction, story ideas may be considered to be protected as the more creative the work, the broader the protection is.)

If Miss Lapine is suing Ms. Seinfeld, then she believes that Ms Seinfeld copied actual expression such as presentation, layout, perhaps some verbatim or nearly verbatim verbiage.

[nibblybits]

05:30 PM on 06/19/2008

There are two lawsuits here, from what I understand: the copyright suit against Mrs. Seinfeld and then the subsequent lawsuit against Jerry Seinfeld, for slander, I imagine, for his comments on Letterman.

Frankly, I don't know what the merits on in the copyright case, but she certainly has a right to sue. But as for the slander suit, Jerry Seinfeld should've kept his fat mouth shut and I think Lapine has a pretty compelling case over it.

[abromber]

08:54 PM on 06/19/2008

Not really. Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Does Ms. Lapine not have three names? Did she not accuse Seinfeld's wife of plagiarism? Merely making fun of someone is not defamation, even if it makes them look bad. Defamation requires that you make false statements about someone that injures their reputation. The man's a comic, for goodness sake. If insulting people for a laugh was actionable, Don Rickles, along with 90% of the comedians in America, including Leno and Letterman himself would have been sued out of existence long ago.

This lawsuit is obviously a publicity stunt and it is working. Lapine should give Seinfeld a percentage of her royalties.

[fcsakes]

04:28 PM on 06/19/2008

This is the dumbest excuse for - heck - me even sitting down and typing that I have seen in a long time. Is someone taking this seriously? ANYONE?

His wife needs to fight her own battles. Doesn't she?