Merrick-native actress Lindsay Lohan filed a defamation lawsuit Tuesday against Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, of Centre Island—pitting the South Shore against the Gold Coast in a celebrity courtroom showdown.
Attorneys for the Mean Girls star claimed that a guest on Hannity’s eponymous show made “blatantly false, malicious, defamatory and reckless statement” about Lohan and her mother, Dina, causing emotional distress, according to court documents filed at New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.
“Lindsay Lohan’s mom is doing cocaine with her,” Michelle Fields, a Fox News contributor, reportedly said while debating the fatal overdose of Philip Seymour Hoffman in a segment of “The Great American Panel” during the Feb. 4, 2014 episode of Hannity.
Fox News issued an on-air apology two weeks later, promised not to re-run the segment and removed both the video as well as an associated blog post from their website, according to a letter from the network’s lawyers to Lohan’s attorneys published by Adweek.
Included in the 28-year-old actress’ lengthy rap sheet is a 2007 guilty plea to two counts of being under the influence of cocaine. She also told Oprah about her cocaine use in 2013 and one year prior she disputed reports on a widely quoted recorded phone call to her father saying that her 52-year-old mother was on cocaine. For alleging that mother and daughter snort cocaine together, the Lohans are seeking unspecified monetary damages from Fields, Hannity and the cable news network.
Lohan and her mother “suffer severe mental and emotional distress; embarrassment and humiliation; pain and suffering; and economic loss, including loss of income, entertainment and acting contracts, present and future diminished income and economic opportunities” as a result of the Fox News comment, Mark Jay Heller, a Manhattan-based attorney for Lohan, said in a statement.
“We will defend this case to the fullest,” a Fox News representative said in statement. “The remark about which Lindsay and Dina Lohan complain was made on live television by a guest nearly a year ago… At that time, the Lohans did not make any demands for money, and we are surprised they are doing so now.”
Lohan, whose breakout role as a child actress came in 1998 with a remake of Disney’s The Parent Trap, has filed several similar suits while struggling to re-launch her career after a string of stints in jail and rehab.
E-Trade settled Lohan’s lawsuit against the company in 2010 after it ran a commercial with a baby “milkaholic Lindsay.” In 2013, a judge dismissed a case in which she alleged Pitbull wrote disparaging song lyrics about her. Still pending is a lawsuit Lohan filed against the makers of the Grand Theft Auto video game, which she claims used her likeness without her permission.
