CHICAGO (CN) — U.S. District Judge Mary Rowland granted summary judgment to former Jussie Smollett attorney Tina Glandian on Friday, settling for now a more than 5-year defamation case brought against her by brothers Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo.
The Donald Trump appointee concluded that Glandian, an attorney with the law firm Geragos & Geragos, had simply described the brothers’ behavior in televised remarks she made in March 2019.
“Plaintiffs are essentially attempting to hold Glandian liable for discussing their own admitted conduct,” Rowland wrote. “These accusations cannot withstand summary judgment.”
The Osundairo brothers — one of whom worked with Smollett on the set of the television show “Empire” — say Smollett paid them to stage a bogus hate crime on himself in Jan. 2019.
Smollett was subsequently charged with multiple counts of criminal misconduct for reporting a false hate crime to police. A protracted legal battle saw the charges dropped, new criminal charges filed and Smollett convicted before that conviction was ultimately overturned by the Illinois Supreme Court.
In the background of this high-profile case, the Osundairo brothers were pursuing their own legal fights, including against Glandian. They sued her, Geragos & Geragos and the law firm’s Principal Mark Geragos in federal court in April 2019, claiming the lawyers had publicly besmirched their names to bolster their own and Smollett’s reputations. They highlighted Glandian’s 2019 comments to national media, while she was still acting as Smollett’s attorney.
In March 2019, days after former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx dropped the initial criminal charges against Smollett, Glandian appeared on the “Today” show and “Good Morning America,” as well as several podcasts. She said that it was the Osundairo brothers who lied to police about the attack, not her client.
On the “Today” show segment specifically, she suggested the two brothers, who are Black, may have been wearing “whiteface” to conceal their identities while carrying out a real hate crime against Smollett.
To support her claim, Glandian pointed to a YouTube video where Abimbola, the younger of the brothers, wore white makeup while reciting a monologue as The Joker from the 2008 Batman film “The Dark Knight.”
“I was looking up the brothers and one of the first videos that showed up actually was one of the brothers in whiteface, doing a Joker monologue with white makeup on,” Glandian said at the time. “So, it’s not implausible.”
The brothers wrote in their April 2019 complaint that Glandian’s comments distanced them from their own communities.
“As a result of Ms. Glandian’s comments, Plaintiffs have suffered significant emotional distress and feel unsafe and alienated in their local Chicago community,” the brothers wrote. “This is because Ms. Glandian, a very famous attorney, falsely and publicly stated Plaintiffs have committed a gruesome hate crime, lied under oath, and intentionally misled [the] Chicago Police Department.”
Rowland partially dismissed the brothers’ case in March 2020, tossing out several of their defamation and false light claims. The judge nevertheless allowed the claims pertaining to Glandian’s “whiteface” comments to move forward, finding the brothers had sufficiently shown Glandian acted with “actual malice” when making those comments.
The brothers filed an amended complaint in June 2020, focusing more specifically on Glandian’s whiteface comments and her April 2019 appearance on the “Reasonable Doubt” legal podcast, where they said she accused them of being involved in the distribution of “illegal Nigerian steroids.”
“Plaintiffs do not use or distribute illegal Nigerian steroids,” the brothers wrote in their amended complaint.
Rowland in March 2022 once again threw cold water on the brothers’ claims, dismissing Mark Geragos and the Geragos & Geragos law firm from the suit entirely and also tossing the claims surrounding Nigerian steroids. The judge nevertheless allowed the claims pertaining to Glandian’s whiteface comments go forward, but on Friday she ultimately gave Glandian the legal benefit of the doubt.
“At the time of the Today Show interview, Glandian was not aware of any information that would have led her to believe that her statements regarding the white makeup were false or were likely to be false,” Rowland wrote. “Glandian did not intend to accuse Plaintiffs of committing a crime, and she did not view her statements as an accusation of committing a crime.”
Rowland further concluded that Glandian’s comments were substantially true.
“To the extent that the Osundairos believe that the specific suggestion they may have used white makeup was defamatory, this also fails for two reasons,” Rowland wrote. “First, Abimbola specifically testified that during the attack, he tried to look like a white person.”
“Second,” she added, “Plaintiffs specifically concede in their briefing that whether the brothers wore white makeup is a ‘secondary detail.’ This kind of ‘error in detail’ is not actionable.”
Gregory Kulis, attorney for the Osundairo brothers, told Courthouse News the brothers had not yet decided if they planned to appeal Rowland’s order.