NBA star Tony Parker has just filed a $40 million dollar defamation suit against celebrity photo agency X17Online. The site was the first to run a story about a french model's claim that she and Parker had an affair just two months after he married his wife, Eva Longoria.
X17 published Alexandra Paressant's statements, in addition to text messages that were allegedly exchanged between Parker and Paressant.
According to Parker's court complaint, X17 "had to know that the story was false, or at the very least, it had to have entertained serious doubts about the credibility of its supposed source".
Only hours after the story was released, Parker and Longoria released statements claiming that the allegations were not true. Parker even claims that he never met Paressant.
"Celebrities are easy targets—both for those who would seek their own fame and fortune by fabricating salacious stories about them, no matter how damaging or hurtful, and for those who make their living publishing these false and defamatory lies, no matter how patently baseless," according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit claims that none of the company's reporters contacted Parker or his associates to verify the story before posting it on the Internet. It also claims that no one took the story down after being informed that it was not true.
After hearing of the lawsuit, X17 filed a statement with E! online, claiming that they, "conducted extensive research for the reporting of this story," and that the information uncovered was "significant and newsworthy"
