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hurt on Rosie's show
Suit: Koosh ball to mouth did her love life no good
As if Rosie O'Donnell's lawyers didn't have enough to do already, her now-defunct talk show is getting sued by a woman who claims an errant Koosh ball caused her months of pain and suffering.
Lucille DeBellis of Hartsdale, N.Y., is seeking $3 million from the show's producers, Warner Bros. Television and AOL Time Warner.
According to the suit, filed yesterday in Manhattan Supreme Court, DeBellis was injured while attending a November 2001 taping of "The Rosie O'Donnell Show."
DeBellis, a 71-year-old retired police officer, says she was hit in the mouth by a rubber ball launched into the audience by production crew members using a slingshot-like device. Crewmembers at TV tapings routinely toss souvenir items into the audience to get spectators warmed up for the show.
DeBellis claims that she experienced some pretty severe medical consequences from the seemingly minor incident, including pain and swelling in her lips and mouth, bleeding in her gums and lumps in her mouth that had to be treated with cortisone injections and antibiotics.
She further claims that the medications caused her gastric distress, and that her pain and disfigurement interfered with her social activities and romantic life.
"[T]he pain and soreness around [her] mouth adversely affected her relationship with her boyfriend," claims the complaint.
O'Donnell herself, who retired from TV a year ago, is not named as a defendant in the suit.
She is, however, the target of a $100 million breach of contract suit filed last year by Gruner + Jahr USA. O'Donnell had partnered with the company to produce Rosie, a women's magazine that doubled as a vehicle for her own celebrity brand.
She walked away from the partnership last September, claiming that G+J had violated an agreement establishing her right to exercise editorial control and have a say in hiring decisions.
When the publisher filed suit against her, she fired back with a $125 million countersuit.
Earlier this week, it was reported that O'Donnell recently attempted to resolve the matter with an email to a top G+J executive.
In the message, she offered to drop her suit in exchange for G+J withdrawing its own suit, paying her $4 million legal tab and donating the money she had invested in Rosie -- about $6 million -- to charity. The executive, Axel Ganz, did not respond to the proposal.
June 12, 2003© 2003 Media Life
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