Tom Cruise sues Bauer Publishing for suggesting he ‘abandoned’ Suri
US actor Tom Cruise arrives for the European premiere of the film ‘Rock of ages’ at the Odeon Cinema in Leicester Square in London, on June 10, 2012.
Actor Tom Cruise has shrugged off jokes about jumping on Oprah’s couch and rumors about weird stuff he gets up to as a Scientologist. But he’s not letting any magazine call him a deadbeat dad.
Cruise filed a defamation lawsuit against Bauer Publishing today, arguing that the July 30 issue of its tabloid Life & Style Weekly made unsupported claims that he’d abandoned his 6-year-old daughter, Suri, the New York Daily News reported. Cruise is seeking $50 million in damages.
The cover of the offending issue featured a photograph of Suri, Cruise’s daughter with ex-wife Katie Holmes, accompanied by the tagline, “Suri in Tears, Abandoned by Her Dad,” the Wall Street Journal reported.
Cruise’s filing declares that the article inside “[did] not remotely purport to provide any facts indicating or suggesting that Tom ‘abandoned’ Suri, as proclaimed on the cover,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The complaint explained Suri was teary because she’d been told she could not bring a puppy home from a pet store.
"Tom is a caring father who dearly loves Suri," attorney Bert Fields said in a statement today, according to the Los Angeles Times. "To say he has 'abandoned' her is a vicious lie. To say it in lurid headlines with a tearful picture of Suri is reprehensible."
"These serial defamers are foreign-owned companies with their global headquarters in Hamburg,” Fields added, according to the New York Daily News. “They take money from unsuspecting Americans by selling their malicious garbage. Having to pay a libel judgment may slow them down.”
Cruise plans to donate any money he wins from the lawsuit to charity, Fields said, according to the LA Times.
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