Frank Ocean Defeats His Fathers Super Sad Libel Case

Publish date: 2024-04-17

Frank Ocean has defeated the $14.5 million libel suit that his father, Calvin Cooksey, filed against him earlier this year, according to Law360. A California federal judge ruled that Cooksey had not proved that Ocean defamed him with a 2016 Tumblr post, in which he recalled a childhood incident in which his father called a transgender waitress an anti-gay slur. Cooksey claimed the post cost him “future financial opportunities in the film and music.”

Ocean’s attorney, Keith Bremer, confirmed the ruling to Pitchfork on Wednesday. “It was a super sad case,” Bremer told Pitchfork in a statement. “I am sorry that my client had to go through this and am glad that we could bring closure.”

“I was six years old when I heard my dad call our transgender waitress a f—-t as he dragged me out of a neighborhood diner saying we wouldn’t be served because she was dirty,” Ocean wrote in the post. “That was the last afternoon I saw my father and the first time I heard that word, I think, although it wouldn’t shock me if it wasn’t.”

In February, Cooksey denied the incident in a statement to Rolling Stone.

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“I have never discriminated against anyone transgender or heterosexual or homosexual,” he wrote. “The events that defendant describes on June 21st 2016, that I called a transgender waitress F—-T NEVER HAPPENED … The defendant is a scam artist, a fraud and a hypocrite who deceive[d] the LGBT community on June 21st, 2016 for the financial success of [Ocean’s album] Blonde.” Cooksey went on to call Ocean’s post a “publicity stunt in the wake of the Orlando [Pulse nightclub] attack.”

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