Former CNN host Don Lemon filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk on Thursday over the abrupt cancellation of their short-lived content partnership earlier this year. According to the suit submitted to the Superior Court of California for San Francisco County, Lemon is charging Musk, X Corp, and multiple company executives fraud, negligent misrepresentation, misappropriation of name and likeness, and breach of express contract, which has caused him to suffer “psychological and emotional distress, humiliation, and mental and physical pain and anguish.”
As Valuetainment previously reported, “The Don Lemon Show” was canceled in March before releasing a single episode. In the premiere, Lemon interviewed Musk about “everything from SpaceX to the presidential election,” but the billionaire CEO was less than impressed by the show’s format. At the time, sources said that Musk found Lemon “underwhelming, unprepared, and dull,” describing the show as “basically just CNN, but on social media.”
Later reports indicated that Lemon had demanded $5 million, a free Tesla Cybertruck, and an equity stake in X in exchange for partnering with the platform.
According to Lemon’s lawsuit:
Amid Defendants’ ongoing struggle to retain advertisers, Defendants sought to affiliate with reputable figures whose name, likeness and reputation they could use to piggyback off of to retain advertisers. Lemon was a top prospect for X, and thus, Defendants saw an opportunity and sought to reach an exclusive partnership deal with Lemon, following his termination at CNN, at a time when Lemon was vulnerable.
[…]
Contrary to the promises and representations made to Lemon, once Defendants were enriched and gained the benefits of using Lemon’s name, likeness, identity, and reputation, they reneged on their express agreement with Lemon and have failed to compensate him, citing to false pretenses for their breach of the partnership agreement.
[…]
Defendants deliberately misrepresented what they intended to do. Defendants knew that if they accurately represented to Lemon that the purpose and meaning of the exclusive partnership deal was to use Lemon’s name, likeness, reputation, and identity to rehabilitate Defendants reputation and draw in advertisers to the X platform, Lemon would never have agreed to do what he did and Defendants would have been unable to utilize Lemon to keep up with their ongoing efforts to woo advertisers.
Lemon is now seeking an undisclosed amount in damages against Musk and X Corp.
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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