LAS VEGAS – O.J. Simpson couldn’t have been defamed by accounts that he was drunk and disruptive before being banned from a Las Vegas Strip hotel-casino, because his reputation was already tarnished, attorneys for the property told a judge.
The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas cited the former football star’s criminal and civil trials in the 1994 deaths of his ex-wife and her friend in Los Angeles and his conviction and imprisonment in Nevada in his 2007 armed robbery case.
Simpson “is a well-known public figure,” Cosmopolitan attorneys said in court documents filed Jan. 14, and media reports that Simpson was “wasted,” “disruptive” or “angry” could not have resulted in “tangible damage to his reputation.”
Simpson blames unnamed hotel staff for telling celebrity website TMZ that he was prohibited from returning to the Cosmopolitan in November 2017. TMZ is not a defendant in the lawsuit.
Simpson’s lawyer, Malcolm LaVergne, responded with a Monday court filing labeling the Cosmopolitan argument “immoral” and invoking the history of two landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding race – the 1857 Dred Scott ruling denying full citizenship to African Americans and Plessy v. Ferguson, a 1898 case upholding the idea of segregated “separate but equal” facilities. Both precedents have since been invalidated by constitutional amendments and court challenges.
LaVergne denied Wednesday he was, in his words, “playing the race card.” Still, he alleged “undertones that are very disturbing” of bias by defendants the Cosmopolitan and corporate owner Nevada Property 1 LLC.
“What are they saying? Anyone can do anything and say anything against him?” LaVergne said of the company attitude toward Simpson. LaVergne called that “the slavery-segregation argument that Simpson doesn’t deserve damages.”
Officials and attorneys representing the Cosmopolitan declined Wednesday to comment.
Simpson, 72, is living in a Las Vegas golf community after serving nine years in a Nevada prison for leading five men, including two with guns, in a bid to retrieve personal items and memorabilia from two collectibles dealers in a Las Vegas hotel room. His parole is due to end in 2022.