If you can believe it, the court battles are still going on between author Rita Cosby and Howard K. Stern. The latest news is that Cosby filed a motion to dismiss the $60 million lawsuit Stern served her with for alleging, among other things, that Stern and Larry Birkhead were having a gay affair and that a sex tape exists.
In Cosby's motion to dismiss the defamation claims, Cosby says “the fact that Howard and Larry videotaped a sexual encounter does not make the acts any more negative.”
The Smoking Gun: “Even if she was wrong when reporting that Howard K. Stern and Larry Birkhead had a sexual encounter, the author of a book about Anna Nicole Smith contends that the claim is not defamatory because ‘engaging in a homosexual tryst, even if videotaped, does not reflect poorly on someone and in the 21st Century it most certainly is not a ‘criminal lewd act.” This ‘not-that-there's-anything-wrong-with-it' defense is included in a new federal court declaration filed by TV journalist Rita Cosby, whose 2007 book ‘Blonde Ambition' triggered a defamation lawsuit brought by Stern, Smith's lawyer and confidante. In her book, Cosby reported that Stern and Birkhead, father to Smith's daughter Dannielynn, engaged in sexual relations, and that a videotape of the two men having sex existed and was viewed by Smith, who died last February. In a December 19 U.S. District Court declaration, an excerpt of which you'll find below, Cosby argues that ‘the fact that Howard and Larry videotaped a sexual encounter does not make the acts any more negative.'”
