Tabloids InTouch, Life & Style reach settlement with Tom Cruise
Facing a $50-million lawsuit over headlines in its supermarket tabloids that claimed Tom Cruise had “abandoned” his daughter following his 2012 marital split with Katie Holmes, Bauer Publishing announced it has reached a confidential settlement with the actor.
Bauer and its magazines Life & Style and InTouch “never intended to communicate that Tom Cruise had cut off all ties and abandoned his daughter, Suri, and regret if anyone drew that inference from anything they published,” said a statement released Saturday by a Bauer representative. It said the parties had agreed that the terms of the settlement would not be disclosed.
The suit, filed by Cruise in October 2012 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, alleged that the actor was defamed, and his privacy invaded by the July 30, 2012, issue of Life & Style and the Oct. 1, 2012, issue of InTouch, along with online images of their covers, which featured photos of Cruise’s daughter.
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The suit said the cover headlines — “Suri in tears, abandoned by her dad” in “Life & Style” and “Abandoned by daddy” in InTouch — were false and not even supported by what the articles inside the magazines reported; the suit said the text of the InTouch article acknowledged that he and his daughter spoke daily while he was abroad in London to shoot a film, and that they remained “very close.”
Cruise’s attorney, Bertram Fields, said when the suit was filed that the actor “is not a litigious guy,” but felt outraged over how he’d been portrayed and wanted the tabloids to face consequences for running lurid headlines intended to generate sales at supermarket checkout stands. Fields said Cruise would donate any money he won to charity.
On its website, Bauer says it is “the No. 1 seller of magazines at retail in the country.”
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