Jerry Seinfeld: Lawsuit against Jerry Seinfeld tossed out of court

Jerry Seinfeld’s legal woes are over. A judge has thrown out a lawsuit by a cookbook author who accused the actor of hurting her reputation by mocking her on national television.

In a ruling filed with the court Friday, state Justice Marcy Friedman said it was clear the comedian was joking when he called author Missy Chase Lapine a “wacko” during an appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman in 2007.

The judge said Seinfeld also has a constitutional right to express his opinion.

The suit stemmed from a legal battle in which Lapine accused Seinfeld’s wife, Jessica, of stealing her idea for a book on how to get children to eat healthy. Both women had published their books that year. Lapine’s was called, The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals. Jessica Seinfeld’s was titled Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food.

Friedman’s ruling, signed Wednesday but filed Friday, noted that you can’t sue someone for libel in the U.S. merely for hurling an insult. You must show that a person lied about facts in order to damage a person’s reputation and did so in such a way that a reasonable person would have believed that those false statements were true.

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