Mariah Carey has defeated a long-running lawsuit that alleged she defamed her brother in her bestselling 2020 memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey.
In 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 “actual malice” — that is, demonstrate that they lied on purpose.
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“The Court finds that Plaintiff has not sufficiently pleaded actual malice on the part of Defendant,” wrote Judge Leslie A. Stroth. “Plaintiff has alleged that Defendant was more concerned with the ‘commercial viability’ of her memoir than verifying the truth of her statements, and that Defendant’s 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.”
Judge Stroth ruled the lawsuit cannot move forward without meeting the actual malice standard, thus dismissing it completely. Mariah’s attorney, John Rosenberg, told Billboard, “Ms. Carey is gratified that the Court recognized that her memoir addresses significant issues of public interest and dismissed her brother’s defamation claims in their entirety.”
“Ms. Carey believes the importance of the Court’s decision goes well beyond her own interests in this particular litigation,” added Rosenberg, “as it confirms that authors must be afforded broad protection when they speak out on matters of public concern.”
Morgan’s attorney, Richard Altman, said he plans to appeal the dismissal. “We respectfully disagree with today’s decision as being inconsistent with prior rulings in the case,” Altman tells Billboard.
It’s been a long road to get to Monday’s ruling. Morgan first sued Mariah back in 2021, a few months after The Meaning of Mariah Carey hit No. 1 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 “vicious fight between my father and brother” and another that said Morgan had “sketchy contacts in the music industry.”
The 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 on two passages in the book: one in which Mariah wrote that her brother sold “powdered party favors” to clubgoers in the 1980s, and another claiming he had “been in the system.”
The 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.
The new judge took a fresh look at the case in Monday’s opinion. Focusing on the issue of actual malice, which had not been the focus of Mariah’s first motion to dismiss back in 2022, Judge Stroth determined that Morgan’s failure to meet this standard should doom the entire case after all.