Ex-porn shop worker wants defamation claim lodged by North Carolina lieutenant governor dismissed
A former porn shop worker who was accused by North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of defamation has asked a court to throw out the lawsuit claim against him
RALEIGH, N.C. — A former porn shop worker who was accused by North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of defamation has asked a court to throw out the lawsuit claim against him, calling the politician's allegations “bizarre” and his demand for at least $50 million in damages a violation of civil court rules.
Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor, filed a lawsuit in Wake County court Tuesday against CNN and Louis Love Money, of Greensboro, saying they published “disgusting lies" about him.
The lawsuit identified a CNN report last month that Robinson made explicit racial and sexual posts on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago. Weeks before CNN's report, Money alleged in a music video and in a media interview that for several years starting in the 1990s, Robinson frequented a porn shop Money was working at, and that Robinson purchased porn videos from him.
Attorneys for Money, in filing a dismissal motion Wednesday, said that Robinson’s lawsuit violated a procedural rule that requires that a person seeking punitive damages state initially a demand for monetary damages “in excess of $25,000.”
The motion said the rule is designed to “prevent excess demands from leaking publicly in the media and tainting the judicial process.” Violating the rule, attorneys Andrew Fitzgerald and Peter Zellmer wrote, may “have been for the very purpose of creating media attention for Mr. Robinson’s campaign.”
Otherwise, the attorneys also are seeking a dismissal on the grounds that the allegations in the lawsuit, even if they were true, fail to establish a
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