LeBron James. (Photo by Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images)Some people just can’t let it go. Leicester Bryce Stovell—the D.C. lawyer who claims to be the long, lost father of LeBron James—has had yet another lawsuit against the NBA star tossed out of court, as the Washington Business Journal first reported.
In April of this year, Stovell—whose original $4 million paternity lawsuit against James was dismissed after DNA tests came up negative, but then claimed they had been tampered with—filed a second lawsuit alleging that James portrayed Stovell “in a false light through certain comments made … in a story published in the April 30, 2012 edition of Sports Illustrated Magazine,” according to court documents.
Stovell, the document states, was upset that James’ comments in the issue, while not mentioning him by name, referenced him in a defamatory nature and gave people the wrong impression about him as a father, even though the court already ruled that he was not James’ father. Specifically, Stovell was hurt about this statement from James:
“My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I use to always say, ‘Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?’
But as I got older I looked deeper though, ‘I don’t know what my father was
going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?’”
James said. “It made me grow up fast. It helped me be more responsible. Maybe
I wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”
Stovell’s lawsuit did not allege that the article “identified him as the Defendant’s father,” but rather, that Stovell “alleges that because his first lawsuit received worldwide media attention,” that people who read Lebron’s statement in Sports Illustrated “learned of the abandonment charge for the first time from the article and associated the abandonment charge with [Stovell] for the first time.” Basically, Stovell just won’t stop trying to get a piece of that NBA all-star money.
Alas, Stovell—who was representing himself—was thwarted again by the law, though this time it’s because he didn’t file his lawsuit fast enough. “The unrebutted evidence in the record establishes that the magazine containing the purportedly defamatory statements at issue was generally available for sale on April 25, 2012, making the Plaintiff’s April 29, 2013, complaint untimely,” the court document reads. Foiled again!
