Less than a week after Garth Brooks was accused of rape in California, the country singer was back in federal court in Mississippi today to kneecap his own attempts to keep real names in the matter out of the public eye.
Having been revealed in the extremely graphic October 3 filing in LA Superior Court by a “Jane Roe,” Brooks in an amended complaint Tuesday published the identity of the former make-up artists and stylist to himself and spouse and fellow country music icon Trisha Yearwood.
With talk of his “stellar public image and selfless philanthropic work” being in jeopardy, Brooks today described being “the victim of a shakedown” and a “blackmail” move by said Jane Roe to get him to pay out “millions of dollars” to her.
Denying everything, as he did last week, Brooks blames the “malicious scheme” all on Roe’s anger at having “her request for salaried employment and medical benefits” rejected. To that, in now wanting his own motion denied, Brooks also said Tuesday that his mid-September motion for “pseudonym treatment for both parties” has become a dead letter office thanks to Jane Roe’s own attorney.
“Rather than allow this Court to consider and adjudicate Plaintiff’s request, Roe wrested the decision from the Court,” Brooks and his legal team said today in their 7-page reply to defendant’s response. “While Plaintiff’s Motion to proceed under a pseudonym was pending, and before it was even fully briefed, Roe’s counsel, Douglas Wigdor, revealed to CNN that Plaintiff was world-famous musician and humanitarian Garth Brooks,” the reply of the West Coast allegations of “painful and traumatic” rape, battery and other assaults from 2019. “CNN published an article about the dispute even before Roe’s California lawsuit was on file and available on a public docket. CNN’s publication also quoted Roe’s counsel making derisive statements about this lawsuit.”
Almost identical to Brooks first federal filing of about a month ago, the SAC filed today only differs from the one before it with its two mentions of Jane Roe’s real name and the singer himself, who went before under “John Doe.”
In the October 8 Mississippi jury trial filing, as with the September 13 one, Tennessee-based Brooks wants a “declaratory judgment that Defendant’s allegations against him of sexual misconduct are untrue,” as well as a series of unspecified damages in excess of $75,000 The six-claim West Coast LASC filing from Jane Roe seeks a series of unspecified damages too.
Deadline is not going to publish the real name of Brooks’ rape accuser at this time.
However, with Brooks’ reveal of Jane Roe’s real name, her lawyers may now be seeking more out of the courts in the Southern state, at least indirectly.
“Garth Brooks just revealed his true self,” exclaimed Doug Wigdor, Jeanne M. Christensen and Hayley Baker in a statement provided to Deadline this evening. “Out of spite and to punish, he publicly named a rape victim. With no legal justification, Brooks outed her because he thinks the laws don’t apply to him. On behalf of our client, we will be moving for maximum sanctions against him immediately.”
Immediately to be read as October 9, a well placed source tells me.
Telling perhaps of the new more public strategy Brooks is now pursuing, the singer added Daniel Petrocelli, one of corporate Hollywood’s favorite go-to lawyers, to his team on October 4. Joined by Megan Smith and Eric Amdursky from O’Melveny & Myers’s California offices, Petrocelli and his firm colleages will now work aside Brook’s R. David Kaufman-led initial legal team of Jackson, Mississippi’s Brunini, Grantham, Grower & Hewes, PLLC.
On October 7, Brooks briefly addressed “the elephant in the room” on his Inside Studio G on Facebook Live. “This thing is on, it’s gonna happen,” the singer said of the allegations and court battle. “People are telling me it could be up to two years,” Brooks added. “So my suggestion is, we all take a deep breath, just kinda settle in and let’s hold hands and take a trip together, because it is something that we cannot talk about. That’s all we can say about it.”
