LEGAL FILE

Defamation Suit Against Hall Dismissed: A Superior Court judge has dismissed one of two $10-million defamation lawsuits against comedian Arsenio Hall, citing the entertainer’s right to free speech and a case backlog. Hall was sued for calling Willis Edwards, a former NAACP official, an “extortionist” and “tennis-shoe pimp.” In his Jan. 20, 1989 suit, Edwards, former president of the Beverly Hills-Hollywood branch of the NAACP, charged that Hall had referred to him as an “extortionist” in an interview broadcast over KACE radio and printed in the Los Angeles Sentinel. The statements were made after a November, 1988, meeting in which Hall claimed Edwards demanded a $40,000 contribution to the NAACP to prevent Edwards from publicly announcing that Hall had not hired a sufficient number of blacks to work on his talk show.