TAKING THE L

Barstool’s Dave Portnoy Quits Chasing Appeal of Insider Defamation Suit

“We’re not surprised,” Insider’s editor-in-chief tweeted. “Our stories were accurate and fair.”

Exactly a year after first announcing he would sue Insider and its reporters over a bombshell investigation into his alleged pattern of sexual misconduct, Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy has abandoned his appeal of a judge’s decision to throw out his defamation lawsuit. A Wednesday filing in U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit noted that lawyers for both Portnoy and Insider had agreed to dismiss the appeal, with both sides covering their own legal fees. A source close to the matter told Axios that Portnoy’s legal team had reached out to Insider’s counsel about dropping the appeal. In a statement posted to Twitter on Thursday evening, Insider editor-in-chief Nich Carlson wrote, “We’re not surprised. Our stories were accurate and fair.” On Nov. 7, 2022, eight months after Insider published its second of two stories detailing allegations from women who said they’d had sexual encounters with Portnoy that had turned violent, or that he’d filmed them without consent during sex, a district judge in Massachusetts threw his suit out over a lack of evidence.