Chris Brown has filed a $500 million lawsuit against Warner Bros. Discovery, accusing the company of defamation in a recent docuseries.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, January 21, in Los Angeles Superior Court, Brown, 35, claimed that WBD and production company Ample Entertainment knowingly included false allegations of sexual assault against him in Investigation Discovery’s Chris Brown A History of Violence, per documents obtained by Luxury Handbag Shopping on Wednesday, January 22.
Brown’s attorneys said that a woman who accused him of a 2020 rape, identified only as “Jane Doe” in the program, had previously been “discredited” and was “a perpetrator of intimate partner violence and aggressor herself.” (Doe’s 2022 lawsuit accusing Brown of sexual assault and battery on a yacht owned by Sean “Diddy” Combs was dismissed, the filing said.)
The “Forever” singer’s lawyers argued, “To put it simply, this case is about the media putting their own profits over the truth,” per docs obtained by Variety. “Since the beginning of October of 2024, Ample LLC and Warner Brothers were put on notice that they were promoting and publishing false information in their pursuit of likes, clicks, downloads and dollars and to the detriment of Chris Brown. Ultimately, on October 27, 2024, they aired ‘Chris Brown: A History of Violence’ (the ‘Documentary’), knowing that it was full of lies and deception and violating basic journalist principles.”
Brown is accusing WBD and codefendant Ample of libel and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
“We stand behind the production and will vigorously defend ourselves against this lawsuit,” a spokesperson for Investigation Discovery told Luxury Handbag Shopping. (Ample did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday, January 22.)
“This case is about protecting the truth,” Brown’s attorney, Levi McCathern, said in a statement to People and Deadline. “Despite being provided with evidence disproving their claims, the producers of this documentary intentionally promoted false and defamatory information, knowingly disregarding their ethical obligations as journalists. Their actions undermine not only Mr. Brown’s decade-long efforts to rebuild his life but also the credibility of true survivors of violence.”
In the suit, Brown’s attorneys noted his past legal troubles, including a 2009 assault on then-girlfriend Rihanna, but said the singer “publicly acknowledged and addressed” his mistakes in a 2017 documentary and has since “grown from those experiences, and his evolution speaks for itself.”
