Word: libelous
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...Bing, whom it dubbed Bing Laden, and urged readers to call and berate him. Bing's crime? Denying he was the father of British model Elizabeth Hurley's child (DNA tests later proved his paternity). Bing, seen here with Hurley in happier times, threatened to sue the paper for libel, but the parties reached an agreement in which the paper would print an apology in its pages. The apology came last week in the form of a front-page headline that read, a humble and sincere apology to Mr. Steve Bing, philanthropist and humanitarian. The excessively abject tone...
...Major planned assignations as they sat behind Thatcher during Prime Minister's Question Time in the House of Commons. The disclosures may have revised his reputation, but they could also land him in legal trouble. In 1993 Major sued the New Statesman and Scallywag magazines for libel over articles suggesting he was having an affair with a Downing Street caterer. The basis of Major's claim: It was unthinkable he would commit adultery. The cases never went to trial - like most libel actions, they were settled out of court. But both publications incurred debilitating costs. Scallywag eventually went bust...
...relentless workaholic whom a colleague once labeled a robo-comic. The book suffers from a total lack of access to the man and his famous co-stars, as well as from Oppenheimer's egregious sub-tabloid prose--he wouldn't know an elegant phrase if it sued him for libel. "I'm barely interested in my own life," Seinfeld once remarked to a reporter. "I don't know how you could be." If we are to judge by this biography, Jerry had a point. --By Lev Grossman
...ailments of the body, mind and spirit. Founded by the prolific science-fiction novelist L. Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986, Scientology has been accused of using coercion to keep its members in line and intimidation to squelch criticism of its tactics. (Scientology sued TIME in 1992 for libel over a 1991 cover story's portrayal of the church as a ruthless cult; the case was decided in TIME's favor in 2001, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Scientology's appeal.) Cruise is more than a defender of Scientology; he is a resolute advocate. "It's something...
With the same deliberateness, he has set out in recent years to eradicate persistent rumors that he is gay. In 1998 he won libel damages against a newspaper that called his marriage a sham. Last year he filed two $100 million lawsuits against men who, according to Cruise, spread lies about his sexuality. "I'm not anti-gay," he says, "but how would you feel if someone said your relationship was a sham?" And yet the lawsuits raise a question: Does he protest too much, inviting even more speculation? "If it made it bigger, so what?" he says. "They...