Newly-released court documents say comedian and TV personality Arsenio Hall is filing a lawsuit against Sinead O'Connor for her controversial post to Facebook earlier this month.
On May 1, Irish pop singer O'Connor accused Hall of being the person who “Prince got his drugs [from] over the decades.”
She then suggested the DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) turn its investigative spotlight on Hall after claiming to have “reported [Hall] to the Carver County Sheriff’s office,” stating the sheriff’s office is “aware you spiked me years ago at Eddie Murphy’s house.”
O'Connor then suggests to Hall: “You best get tidying your man cave.”
Hall’s suit, filed on May 5 in Los Angeles, states he “has suffered general and special damages in an amount not presently known, but believed to be not less than $5 million dollars.”
From section 12 of the suit:
“O‘Connor’s malicious internet publication of brazen lies false accusing Hall of engaging in serious criminal conduct by supposedly supplying Prince with hard drugs over the decades, and of ”spiking“ her, resulted in her defamatory lies becoming widespread and ubiquitous. Within 48 hours after O’Connor initially posted her defamatory lies about Hall on her Facebook page, they had more than 5,000 Facebook ”likes,“ more than 3,000 Facebook ”shares,“ and more than 2,400 Facebook ”comments.“ Making matters worse, the defamatory lies were read not only by reads of O'Connor’s Facebook page, but by countless people who read the innumerable print and internet media reports about her false Facebook post.”
Hall is demanding a trial by jury, according to the lawsuit.
The death of Prince has invited a number of theories for what caused his death, and rumors of addiction to painkillers, cocaine, and even an HIV infection abound.
Londell McMillan, Prince’s lawyer and an associate of his for 25 years, dispelled such rumors, citing Prince’s vegan dietary habits as proof that he led a “clean lifestyle.”
“Everybody who knows Prince knows he wasn’t walking around drugged up,” McMillan told CBS. “That’s foolish. No one ever saw Prince and said ‘He looks high.’ It wasn’t what he was about.”
Prince died at his Paisley Park, Minnesota, estate on April 21. His toxicology results from an autopsy are still pending. He was 57.
