Rocker Sammy Hagar has been fighting a lawsuit from an unnamed former Playboy Bunny who claims that she had his baby. The current incarnation of the lawsuit is mainly focused on what the Jane Doe considers libelous statements made about her by Sammy Hagar in his autobiography Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock.
We’ve reported on the specifics of the case before. Now we’ll show you exactly what Hagar said that has led to this lawsuit.
You’ll notice that he never names the woman in his book. The problem is that, even if 99% of the people who read Hagar’s book don’t know who this woman is, there is a number of people who are familiar with her who do know.
The Jane Doe now lives in Iowa. Circuit Judge Myron Bright explains how that plays into the case against Hagar.
“Under Iowa law, an accusation that a person is a liar is defamatory as a matter of law,” Bright wrote. “Indeed, Hagar’s statements regarding Doe’s criminality, dishonesty, and sexual exploits have a natural tendency to provoke Doe to wrath or expose her to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule within the community of individuals that recognize her as the subject.”
The important phrase here is “within the community of individuals that recognize her as the subject”. Even if only a handful of people — perhaps even people she has told — recognize that the following passages were about her, that is enough to trigger possible culpability on the part of Hagar.
Hagar is an astute businessman who knows how to handle himself.
Without further ado, here is the passage that got Sammy Hagar sued, in its entirety, which will be presented as evidence in this case.
On the tour, there was a former Playboy bunny from California hanging around, who used to see one of the other guys in my old band. Somehow she hooked up with [Hagar’s manager, Ed] Leffler, although she had always been after me. She was good-looking, but there was just something about this chick that was not to be trusted. She saw my name on Leffler’s rooming list and came knocking at my door in the middle of the night in Detroit. I answered the door without any clothes—I sleep naked—and she pushes the door open, throws me on the bed, and starts blowing me. That’s kind of tough to get up and walk away from. “Son of a bitch,” I was thinking, “I’m fucked now.” And sure enough, I was.
About ten days later, Leffler gets the phone call. She’s pregnant. I smelled a setup. I was so pissed off. Betsy would commit suicide. We hired an attorney and started dealing with her. I knew it was not my baby. It was extortion.
She wanted an apartment in New York and anything for that kid that my children would have. I didn’t want to pay a penny, but Leffler convinced me the smart thing to do was give her the money until the baby was born and see what happened at that point. She was living with her boyfriend, a musician in New York, in the apartment when she had the baby. She called Leffler from the hospital. “Tell Sammy to call me,” she said. I didn’t want to talk to her, but Leffler talked me into it. She tells me the baby is so cute, looks just like me, she’s madly in love with me, she’s so sorry, shit like that.
A couple days later, Leffler gets another call. The baby died. I don’t believe that she ever had a baby. She may have had an abortion early on. Marshall Lever, my psychic with the sleeping dog, told me about it. “It’s not your baby,” he said. “She’s living with her boyfriend in New York. She has a boyfriend that’s a musician and this is probably an extortion case. Don’t worry, just relax, and once she has the baby, it’s all going to go away.”
I never heard from her again. Obviously, it wasn’t my baby, and they knew it. They just extorted me as long as they could. No one ever saw her again. — excerpt from Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock, Chapter 7, “5150”, by Sammy Hagar.
