Paris Hilton Settles Defamation Lawsuit
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Is there any week that goes by where Paris Hilton isn’t in the news? The hotel heiress/reality TV star/clothes designer settled a $10 million dollar defamation lawsuit with diamond heiress-actress/film producer/model Zeta Graff August 22. This catfight got nasty along the way to this settlement. The details were not disclosed and if it had not been settled, they would have gone on trial August 27.
In the suit, Zeta Graff claimed Paris Hilton spread vicious lies about her to the New York Post in 2005. The Post reported that Graff, who was once dating Hilton’s then-fiancé Paris Latsis, went berserk at a nightclub, tried to throttle the life out of Hilton, according to an ‘unnamed source,’ as well as trying to steal her $4 million dollar diamond necklace.
The incident, according to the Post report, began when Graff saw Hilton and Paris Latsis dancing and suddenly went nuts. The article ran July 2, 2005 on page six reporting the June 30 run-in at London’s Kabaret nightclub
Graff denied the report and turned it around stating that Hilton told her “I will destroy you.” This was allegedly said when Graff tried to oust her from the nightclub.
Although Hilton denied that she was behind the report, her publicist Rob Shuter said in a deposition that Hilton asked him to help plant the story. Shuter gave the paper comments, which were dictated by Hilton and attributed to him along with Hilton and anonymous sources.
Zeta Graff stated it was Paris who sauntered up to her and said “I will destroy you.” When Graff asked Paris what was she talking about, Paris went up to a promoter at Kabaret and tried to have Graff ousted from the club. The promoter refused and Paris and her fiancé left shortly after.
Other media outlets picked up the story including British media outlets The Sunday Mail and The People ran brief stories about the incident, but later published formal apologies to Zeta Graff and retracted the story saying it never occurred. The Post stands by its story and will not publish a retraction or apology.
