Saturday, October 17, 2009
NEW YORK (AP)— The TLC network has sued Jon Gosselin for purportedly breaching his contract as a star of the hit reality show “Jon & Kate Plus 8.”
The lawsuit, filed Friday in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County, Md., alleges that Gosselin has failed to meet his obligations as an exclusive employee of the network, while appearing on rival networks’ programs for pay and making unauthorized public disclosures about the show.
Gosselin has starred since 2007 on the weekly “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” a ratings hit for the network that has been rocked in recent months by marital turmoil as Gosselin and his wife, Kate, feuded, then filed for divorce.
Gosselin, like his estranged wife, became a mainstay on tabloid TV shows and magazine covers as he was seen in the company of other women.
The couple are the parents of young twins and sextuplets whose family home is in Wernersville, Pa.
The suit is seeking from Gosselin unspecified compensatory damages and demanding he return income gained as a result of his breaches of the agreement, as well as to refrain from future violations of his contractual agreement.
“The network has been trying privately and patiently for months to get Jon to honor the contract he signed and to comply with his obligations relating to public appearances and statements,” said TLC in a statement Friday. “Those efforts have been unsuccessful.”
Gosselin’s lawyer, Mark Jay Heller, said he had not yet read the filing and had no immediate comment.
The lawsuit says that, last June, in recognition of “the Gosselins’ difficult personal circumstances, TLC asked both parents to refrain from making public statements about each other, the divorce, or the program, and negotiated an agreed ‘cooling off’ period with respect to media communications” for 45 days.
Nonetheless, the suit alleges that Gosselin, “in violation of his contractual exclusivity” to his own show, “entered a lucrative arrangement to appear regularly on ‘Entertainment Tonight’ and its companion show, ‘The Insider,’ to discuss his family and the problems he was having with Mrs. Gosselin, and he routinely sold photographic rights to various media outlets ....”
The lawsuit also claims that on Sept. 18, TLC requested that Gosselin be present for filming six days hence. He didn’t respond to the request, and no filming took place Sept. 24, the lawsuit says.
“This guy’s out of control — he was out there everywhere but on TLC,” said a person with knowledge of Gosselin’s behavior who spoke on condition of anonymity because the suit is pending.
The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.