LAS VEGAS – OJ Simpson and a Las Vegas casino hotel have settled a lawsuit alleging that anonymous employees defamed him by telling a celebrity news site that he was denied access to the property in November 2017 because he was drunk. and disruptive.
Simpson’s lawyer, Malcolm LaVergne, declined Thursday to comment on the deal with Nevada Property 1 LLC, the corporate owner of the Las Vegas Cosmopolitan.
“The problem has been solved,” LaVergne said.
A Cosmopolitan spokeswoman declined to comment immediately.
The corporation’s lawyers had claimed that the former football star could not be slandered, as his reputation was already tarnished by his criminal and civil proceedings in the death of his ex-wife and her friend in Los Angeles decades ago and his conviction and imprisonment in Nevada. in a 2007 armed robbery case.
LaVergne had raised the specter of racial prejudice by hotel officials.
The conditions were not made public in the revocation filed on March 31 at Clark County Court. He said both sides had agreed to bear their own costs and legal fees.
Simpson, now 73, is conditioned in Nevada and lives in a closed golf course community after his release from prison in July 2017. He served nine years for armed robbery, kidnapping and a gun attack.
The lawsuit against the Cosmopolitan acknowledged that Simpson had been told, after spending several hours with two friends at a steakhouse and a lounge, that he had been barred from returning to the property. He said he was never given a reason. Simpson denied in his trial that he was “belligerent”, that he broke the bottle or damaged the goods.
LaVergne said at the time that his client’s reputation was affected by accounts quoted in a TMZ report that Simpson “was drunk and became disruptive” at a resort bar. TMZ was not a defendant in the trial.
Simpson was jailed after being convicted in Las Vegas in October 2008 for leading five men, including two with guns, in an unfortunate confrontation with two collection dealers and an intermediary in a cramped room at a hotel. off-strip casino. .
Simpson has always claimed that he was trying to recover personal memories stolen from him following his 1995 acquittal in the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman in Los Angeles. He said family photos and other items disappeared before he was found liable in civil court in February 1997 and ordered to pay $ 33.5 million to Brown and Goldman properties.