Roy Moore Loses $95M Lawsuit Against Sacha Baron Cohen for ‘Pedophile Detector’ Bit
NO HIGH FIVE?
Failed Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore was defeated in his lawsuit brought against comedian Sacha Baron Cohen on Thursday. The former Alabama judge was seeking $95 million in a defamation suit after he said he was tricked into appearing on the Borat actor’s show Who Is America? in which a “pedophile detector” beeped whenever it went near him. The Second U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan upheld an earlier ruling in favor of Baron Cohen, pointing out that Moore had signed an agreement that prevented any legal claims over his appearance on the show. Judges also ruled that it was “clearly comedy” when the detector went off when it was near him, and that viewers wouldn’t think the comic was making a factual allegation against him. The bit riffed on real-world allegations of sexual misconduct made against Moore during his 2017 race to represent Alabama in the Senate.