{"id":939454,"date":"2026-10-20T01:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T01:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/939454\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T01:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T01:10:10","slug":"mariah-carey-wins-dismissal-of-brothers-memoir-defamation-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/939454\/","title":{"rendered":"Mariah Carey Wins Dismissal of Brother\u2019s Memoir Defamation Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMariah Carey<\/a> has defeated a long-running lawsuit that alleged she defamed her brother in her bestselling 2020 memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a Monday (Oct. 19) court order, obtained and first reported by Billboard, a judge ruled that Morgan Carey has not met the requirements to sue his superstar sister over passages of her book that suggested he had sold cocaine and done prison time. New York law requires a defamation lawsuit against a public figure to plead \u201cactual malice\u201d \u2014 that is, demonstrate that they lied on purpose.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Mariah<\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Court finds that Plaintiff has not sufficiently pleaded actual malice on the part of Defendant,\u201d wrote Judge Leslie A. Stroth. \u201cPlaintiff has alleged that Defendant was more concerned with the \u2018commercial viability\u2019 of her memoir than verifying the truth of her statements, and that Defendant\u2019s sources for such statements are anonymous and\/or unverifiable. Notably, Plaintiff fails to provide any proof that Defendant made such statements with knowledge of their falsity or with reckless disregard for the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJudge Stroth ruled the lawsuit cannot move forward without meeting the actual malice standard, thus dismissing it completely. Mariah\u2019s attorney, John Rosenberg, told Billboard, \u201cMs. Carey is gratified that the Court recognized that her memoir addresses significant issues of public interest and dismissed her brother\u2019s defamation claims in their entirety.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMs. Carey believes the importance of the Court\u2019s decision goes well beyond her own interests in this particular litigation,\u201d added Rosenberg, \u201cas it confirms that authors must be afforded broad protection when they speak out on matters of public concern.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMorgan\u2019s attorney, Richard Altman, said he plans to appeal the dismissal. \u201cWe respectfully disagree with today\u2019s decision as being inconsistent with prior rulings in the case,\u201d Altman tells Billboard.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s been a long road to get to Monday\u2019s ruling. Morgan first sued<\/a> Mariah back in 2021, a few months after The Meaning of Mariah Carey hit No. 1<\/a> on the New York Times bestseller list. Morgan initially alleged that his sister had defamed him in eight different parts of the book, including one describing a \u201cvicious fight between my father and brother\u201d and another that said Morgan had \u201csketchy contacts in the music industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first judge assigned to the case, Judge Barbara Jaffe, dismissed many of these claims as insufficient for a defamation case back in 2022. But Judge Jaffe ruled that Morgan could move forward<\/a> on two passages in the book: one in which Mariah wrote that her brother sold \u201cpowdered party favors\u201d to clubgoers in the 1980s, and another claiming he had \u201cbeen in the system.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe case then spent several more years mired in litigation, with Morgan reasserting many of his dismissed claims in an amended complaint. In the meantime, Judge Jaffe retired from the bench and the lawsuit was reassigned to Judge Stroth.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe new judge took a fresh look at the case in Monday\u2019s opinion. Focusing on the issue of actual malice, which had not been the focus of Mariah\u2019s first motion to dismiss back in 2022, Judge Stroth determined that Morgan\u2019s failure to meet this standard should doom the entire case after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mariah Carey has defeated a long-running lawsuit that alleged she defamed her brother in her bestselling 2020 memoir…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":939455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,8127,14088,341,15111],"class_list":["post-939454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-lawsuit","tag-legal","tag-music","tag-music-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=939454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/939455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=939454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=939454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=939454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}