Sacha Baron Cohen Defeats Roy Moore Suit Over Pedophile Detector

Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen won a lawsuit brought by Roy Moore based on Cohen’s use of an alleged pedophile-identifying device during an interview because the former senate candidate waived his right sue, a federal court in New York said.

The interview was “clearly a joke,” the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York said, though it declined to analyze whether the First Amendment barred Moore’s claims.

Instead, invoking a doctrine requiring courts to avoid deciding constitutional claims if possible, the court found that a written standard consent agreement Moore signed expressly prohibited him from suing Cohen for infliction of emotional distress, fraud, and defamation.

The court granted summary judgment for Cohen based on the contract alone.

But it returned to the free speech argument when analyzing emotional distress and fraud claims asserted by Moore’s wife, Kayla. Cohen’s speech and “patently absurd conduct” during the interview was First Amendment-protected political satire and, moreover, couldn’t reasonably be understood as stating actual facts about Moore, it said.

Moore is a former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate in 2017. During the campaign, he was accused of having had inappropriate sexual encounters with young women, at least one of whom was underage.

Cohen’s alter ego, Erran Morad, interviewed Moore for a piece that aired on the television comedy series “Who Is America?” During the interview, Cohen pulled out a device he said could identify “sex offenders and particularly pedophiles.”

The gadget emitted a noise when it came near Moore. He immediately ended the interview.

The court found no support for Moore’s argument that the contractual waiver is ineffective because he was fraudulently induced to sign it.

The contract expressly stated that Moore wasn’t “relying upon any promises or statements made by anyone about the nature of the Program or the identity, behavior, or qualifications of any” of the participants, it said.

No “reasonable viewer” would have seen the interview as anything other than a joke, the court added. It’s “simply inconceivable that the Program’s audience would have found a segment with Judge Moore activating a supposed pedophile-detecting wand to be grounded in any factual basis,” it said Tuesday.

Moore immediately filed a notice informing the court of his intent to appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Judge John P. Cronan wrote the opinion.

The case is Moore v. Cohen, S.D.N.Y., No. 19-cv-4977, 7/13/21.