Empire’s Lee Daniels bashes Sean Penn in a new legal filing.
Legal reps for Daniels have filed new documents that move to strike and dismiss Penn’s defamation lawsuit against him, citing First Amendment protections.
According to reports, Lee Daniels’ counsel managed to slip in a jab aimed at Penn’s iconic Fast Times at Ridgement High character, Jeff Spicoli.
“Spicoli understands the United States Constitution better than Penn,” one footnote reads. “For his final, oral exam in high school history class, surfer-dude Spicoli expounds upon the intent of America’s founding fathers: ‘What Jefferson was saying was, ‘Hey! You know. We left this England place because it was bogus. So if we don’t get some cool rules ourselves – Pronto! – we’ll just be bogus, too. Okay?'”
“To avoid being bogus, Jefferson and his contemporaries adopted the First Amendment, cherished protector of honest opinions and vigilant striker of lawsuits brought to punish and deter such opinions,” the doc continues. “This ‘cool rule’ animates the California and New York laws that mandate dismissal of Penn’s bogus claims.”
The problems all started in September 2014 when Sean Penn filed a $10 million defamation lawsuits against Daniels, claiming that Lee Daniels falsely compared him to Terrence Howard while discussing allegations of domestic violence.
In December, Madonna, who was married to Sean Penn in the late 1980s, came to Penn’s defense by filing official documents that state she was never physically assaulted by the Oscar winner during their marriage.
“Sean has never struck me,” she said in the sworn legal document. “Any report to the contrary is completely outrageous, malicious, reckless and false.”
Lee Daniel’s legal team, also addressed Madonna’s statement:
“The Immaterial Girl’s Declaration expresses Madonna’s attitude toward the truth of the Challenged Statement as of October 7, 2015 (9,768 days after the media first reported that she was ‘trussed up like a turkey’ by Penn), but it says absolutely nothing about Daniels’ attitude toward the truth or falsity of the Challenged Statement at the time he uttered his opinion. Only Daniels’ attitude is relevant to assessing actual malice.”
