Motion filed

 Morgan Carey asks judge in defamation case to rule against Mariah Carey over missing sworn document

By David Baker

Posted July 18, 2022

   Morgan Carey’s long-delayed lawsuit against his sister Mariah Carey over statements about him in her memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey moved forward last week with Morgan Carey’s attorney asking the court for a default judgment because Mariah Carey has failed to sign a document under penalty of perjury.

   As reported here previously, the document, which is filed in response to a complaint that starts a lawsuit, is called an answer. Legal rules in New York require that complaints and any responding documents are verified - which is done by attaching a statement made under oath called a verification. 

   In April, eight months after the filing of an amended complaint, Mariah Carey’s lawyers filed an answer that did not have a verification attached. Instead, they inserted a “Statement regarding improper verification of counsel,” in which they claim that because Morgan Carey’s attorney, Richard Altman, not Morgan Carey, signed a verification with the the amended complaint, it is invalid because Altman states that all of the allegations”.. are true to (his) own knowledge.”

   Courts in other cases have ruled that an objection to an allegedly invalid verification is required to be served within 24 hours; not eight months 

   Altman has now responded by asking the court for a default judgment based on Mariah Carey’s refusal to sign a verification, or, in the alternative, for summary judgment, ruling that Mariah Carey defamed Morgan Carey by writing in the memoir that he is her “…sometimes drug dealing, been-in-the-system drunk-ass brother,” and that in New York city night clubs in the 1980s he “…discreetly supplied the beautiful people with their powdered party favors.”

   Writing in a decision and order in February, the judge said these statements would lead the average reader to conclude that Morgan Carey had dealt illegal drugs, and had been in prison.

    Morgan Carey has stated in a sworn affidavit that he has never supplied illegal substances or been in prison.

   Falsely accusing a person of a committing a serious crime is defamation that does not require evidence of financial or other damage. The only defense is that the statement is true - which is one of the claims made in the document that Mariah Carey has refused to sign under penalty of perjury.

   The return date for the motion is August 15. Responses are required to be served on Morgan Carey’s attorney on or before August 8.

   The judge’s February decision also dismissed all but two of Morgan Carey’s claims, and dismissed the memoir’s co-writer, Michaela Angela Davis, and the book’s publishers from the case.  Morgan Carey’s attorney has filed notice that both those decisions will be appealed.

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PS... An examination of an attorney verification in an unrelated New York lawsuit reveals wording almost identical to that in the disputed statement in the Carey case.

 

   The objection by Mariah Carey's lawyers would appear to be without merit.

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