According to a report from BET.com, the actor, Jussie Smollett, from Empire fame, is still doing everything in his power to have his lawsuit with the city of Chicago thrown out of court. This past Tuesday, the city of Chicago filed a lawsuit against the ex-Empire star.
Jussie has been accused of orchestrating a fake hate crime against himself to profit from the ensuing media publicity. The police are looking to retrieve over $100,000 in damages to pay for the cost of their detectives and other police officers doing overtime.
Smollett refused to pay the city of Chicago the amount they demanded, so the police had no option but to file suit. Reportedly, the city of Chicago is hoping to retrieve approximately $130,000. Deadline reported that plaintiffs, in this case, can request payment three times, totaling $390,318.45.
The investigation proved to be quite expensive for the police department, employing over 25 police officers and spending 1,836 hours of their time pursuing the investigation on the actor’s behalf. The police later became convinced that Jussie faked the whole thing.
Smollett and his legal team subsequently filed a motion to have the claims thrown out of court “with prejudice,” which means the police and the city of Chicago cannot re-plead the lawsuit with the same facts more than once.
Smollett’s team of attorneys stated the city’s civil action against him was both “unprecedented” as well as “perverse.” Smollett and his team are still maintaining his innocence. As it was previously reported, Jussie, 37, was taken to the hospital due to a supposed racially and homophobia-motivated attack on the 29th of January.
Reportedly, the police investigated the crimes seriously, however, after interviewing everyone involved, they subsequently came to suspect Jussie was the one who paid two Nigerian-American brothers to fake the crime on his behalf.
Advertisement
Jussie’s case proved to be quite controversial, even with the president of the United States, Donald Trump, who demanded the FBI investigate how the Chicago prosecutor, Kim Foxx, handled the case. Kim dropped all charges against the actor.
Post Views:
0
