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Artist News Legal
Frank Ocean responds to father’s $14 million libel lawsuit
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 12 May 2017
Frank Ocean has responded to the $14 million libel lawsuit filed against him by his father earlier this year. He denies the accusation that a blog post he published on Tumblr last year presents any untrue statements.
As previously reported, in the wake of the attack on Orlando’s Pulse nightclub last June, Ocean wrote a post on Tumblr, in which he said: “I was six years old when I heard my dad call our transgender waitress a faggot as he dragged me out a neighbourhood diner saying we wouldn’t be served because she was dirty. That was the last afternoon I saw my father and the first time I heard that word, I think, although it wouldn’t shock me if it wasn’t”.
Ocean’s father, Calvin Cooksey, denies that this incident ever took place, accusing his son of staging a “publicity stunt in the wake of the Orlando attack … [and] us[ing] his father as an instrument for personal connection in order to sell records”.
In new legal documents, obtained by Pitchfork, Oceans says that his blog post “speaks for itself” and delivers a true account of the incident about which he wrote. He adds that his father’s arguments are all “statements of opinion, and thus not the proper subjects of a libel claim”.
Ocean is asking for the case to be dismissed, and for his father to cover his legal costs.
