Nine-time PGA Tour winner Patrick Reed, now playing over at LIV Golf, saw his appeal to reverse a dismissal of his $750 million defamation lawsuit against various members of golf media denied on Wednesday, according to Front Office Sports.
Back in September, a U.S. District Court threw out defamation cases filed against 18 entities in golf media that sought over $1 billion in damages. Reed filed motions for recusal and reconsideration, which were denied by two judges on the U.S. Appeals Court for the 11th Circuit in Florida.
Reed’s defamation lawsuit — which targeted prominent media members such as Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee and Damon Hack, Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch, Doug Ferguson of the AP, and Golf Digest’s Shane Ryan, among others — was twice dismissed. Reed was ordered to pay the legal fees of the defendants.
Reed’s attorneys argued that this supposed cadre of golf media members engaged in “conspiracy, defamation, injurious falsehood land tortious interference,’’ when covering Reed’s defection to LIV in 2022.
“The PGA Tour’s and its ‘partner’ the NBC’s Golf Channel’s mission is to destroy a top LIV Golf Tour player, his family, as well as all of the LIV Golf players, to further their agenda and alleged collaborative efforts to destroy the new LIV Golf Tour,” wrote his lawyers.
In dismissing the suit in September, Judge Timothy Corrigan said in a statement: “Reed does not meet the required pleading of actual malice to hold the press liable for defamation. While Reed may be frustrated at the negative media coverage he receives (some of which seems over the top), under Florida law and the First Amendment, Reed fails to bring actionable defamation claims and his cases therefore must be dismissed.”
Reed, winner of the 2018 Masters, will mix it up with Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods, and the PGA Tour’s elite at Augusta National in April.
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