Lynne Spears has filed a new motion in court hoping to strike down three claims in a lawsuit filed against her by daughter Britney Spears’ former manager Sam Lutfi.
In February, Lutfi filed suit against Britney and her parents, Jamie and Lynne Spears, accusing them of libel, defamation, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress and breach of contract. And in Lynne Spears’ court filing on June 15, she claims Lutfi’s lawsuit is meritless because he is suing her for her words, which she claims are constitutionally protected.
In Lynne Spears’ filing, she claims a statement she made in order to help obtain a restraining order for her daughter against Lutfi, filed in court around the time her daughter was placed under a well-documented conservatorship, “became public and were widely reported throughout the United States.”
Lynne Spears claims that those statements, which were in her book “Through The Storm,” and which are cited in Lutfi’s defamation claim, are covered under the First Amendment.
Having previously called Lutfi “fake,” a “Svengali,” and “a predator,” are “mere statements of opinion,” the filing claims.
Lutfi, in his suit, has claimed that “since the publication of” Lynne Spears’ book, “Lutfi has been subjected to unfathomable amounts of ridicule and public scorn. Lutfi claimed he is constantly bombarded by magazine headlines, television shows and internet gossip sites that have propagated Lynne’s lies and fabrications.”
In her new filing, however, Lynne Spears claims she only repeated information that was already out in the public domain as a result of her restraining order related statements that were part of public court documents. Additionally, she claims she couldn’t have done the damage Lutfi claims as her book was “relatively unsuccessful.”
She claims her book “constitutes a ‘public forum’ within a California anti-SLAPP statue,” which was enacted to protect defendants against inappropriate lawsuits that stifle the right to free speech.
Lutfi has not yet filed a response to Lynne Spears’ filing.