Scottie Pippen Fouls Out in Lawsuit Against Media Outlets

Since he retired from basketball, Pippen has worked as a television sports analyst, a goodwill ambassador for the Chicago Bulls and a celebrity product endorser, the ruling said. He currently works as a special advisor to the president and COO of the Bulls, Michael Reinsdorf, a position he’s held since October 2012.

The judge said Pippen failed to make the case that the websites “either knew the statements to be false or were recklessly indifferent to whether they were true or false,” according to the ruling.

To make matters more interesting, the judge invoked the Supreme Court ruling that “actual malice cannot be inferred from a publisher’s failure to retract a statement once it learns it to be false.”

While Pippen reached out via email to inform websites that he had not filed for bankruptcy, the judge said the former forward cannot sue them under the Illinois statute known as the Uniform Single Publication Act, which relieves publications from defamation suits if false claims are made at the time of first publication, according to the ruling.

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