Olivia Wilde has been served with legal papers on behalf of her ex-fiancee Jason Sudeikis while on stage in Las Vegas.
The director, 38, was promoting her new film at CinemaCon when she was handed a brown envelope.
A person approached the stage at Caesars Palace from the seats and slid an envelope marked “personal and confidential” across the front of the stage to her, according to US media reports.
She then opened it, according to Deadline, to find custody documents related to her two children with Sudeikis, the comedian and star of Ted Lasso.
A source for Sudeikis, 46, told Variety: “Papers were drawn up to establish jurisdiction relating to the children of Ms Wilde and Mr Sudeikis.
Image: The envelope was marked ‘personal and confidential’. Pic: AP
“Mr Sudeikis had no prior knowledge of the time or place that the envelope would have been delivered as this would solely be up to the process service company involved, and he would never condone her being served in such an inappropriate manner.”
The pair split up in late 2020 after nearly ten years together and are parents to Otis, eight, and Daisy, five.
After the incident Mitch Neuhauser, CinemaCon’s managing director, said: “We have never in the history of the convention had an incident where a delegate has approached the stage who was not authorised to be there.
Image: Wilde and Jason Sudeikis were together for almost a decade. Pic: AP
“In light of this incident, we are re-evaluating our security procedures to ensure the safety of all our attendees,”
Wilde said she was “happier” than ever last year after starting a relationship with Styles, 28, the former One Direction singer who headlined Coachella this month.
Read more: Olivia Wilde praises Harry Styles for ‘allowing a woman to hold the spotlight’
“I’m happier than I’ve ever been. And I’m healthier than I’ve ever been, and it’s just wonderful to feel that,” she told US Vogue in December.
Her latest film, Don’t Worry Darling, which stars Styles and Florence Pugh, is due to be released in September.
Sudeikis recently won several awards for Ted Lasso, in which he plays a football coach in southwest London.
EXCLUSIVE: Like something out of a hackneyed Hollywood plot, the mysterious envelope picked up by Don’t Worry Darling director and star Olivia Wilde during her CinemaCon presentation last night for the New Line movie were legal documents from Ted Lasso star Jason Sudeikis.
It is our understanding that the manila envelope, marked personal and confidential, which was placed on stage, were custody papers from the Primetime Emmy winner.
Separated since late 2020, Wilde and Sudeikis share two children.Though engaged, the couple never formally tied the knot.
Deadline has reached out to reps for both Wilde and Sudeikis, and will update if we receive statements.
While reps are quiet, what happened on Tuesday was a very loud display, at least figuratively.
Deadline
Last night during the Warner Bros. CinemaCon session at Caesars Palace’s The Colosseum, Wilde was briefly interrupted when an unidentified person approached from the front rows and slid a manila envelope across the front of the stage toward her.
“This is for me?” Wilde asked.
She retrieved the envelope and opened it. However, like a pro, Wilde was not rattled by what must have been a shocker. With her personal life put suddenly on public display, the filmmaker continued addressing the audience of largely exhibitors about her project. After the trailer for Don’t Worry Darling played, it was met with great applause.
Initially, Deadline had heard last night that the contents of the envelope were an unsolicited script. But we now know that is not the case.
In recent memory, it’s hard to think of an impromptu moment at CinemaCon involving an intrusion by an audience member with a star onstage, and this certainly raises security questions. It’s also an acerbic move to sabotage a star with legal papers during their shining moment on stage before 4,100 in the film industry. When one is served papers, that is something that is orchestrated by the person who is actually serving legal documents. In order to get into the Colosseum for CinemaCon, non-industry attendees need to purchase a badge.
Certainly, what occurred last night in Sin City raises serious questions about vetting of attendees at CinemaCon.
When Deadline spoke to those involved in running the show at the Colosseum, they were unaware how the person got in the building, or who they were. In fact, CinemaCon producers just kept the Warner presentation going.
Note that CinemaCon is heavily staffed with security who typically check bags extensively for recording and dangerous devices as well as shepherd the crowd in and out of the event after each studio presentation. CinemaCon provided no comment when reached by Deadline.
Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling comes out on Sept. 23. Eighteen studios bid on the thriller which New Line won, financing the pic in the $20M range. Florence Pugh plays Alice, a 1950s housewife whose husband, Jack, (Harry Styles) is employed by an enigmatic operation known as the Victory Project. The org is is expected to change the world as we know it. The women in town are told to stay indoors, but Alice has her suspicions as she begins to observe violent acts. The trailer is provocative and filled with steamy scenes between Pugh and Styles.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is being sued by former Dominion Voting Systems employee Eric Coomer.Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has been served with another defamation suit.
He was sued by former Dominion employee Eric Coomer, who he once accused of being a “traitor.”
Coomer is suing Lindell and Lindell’s Frank Speech platform for “destroying” his life.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has been served with another lawsuit — this time, from Eric Coomer, a former Dominion Voting Systems employee vilified by right-wing figures who Lindell once accused of being a national traitor.
Lawyers for Coomer, Dominion’s former director of product strategy and security, filed a court complaint against Lindell on April 4 to kick off a defamation case against the pillow CEO and his platform, Frank Speech. Lindell was served with the lawsuit on April 5 at a mini-rally he hosted in Denver, Colorado, on behalf of indicted clerk Tina Peters.
Coomer alleged that his reputation had been “irreparably tarnished” by Lindell and Frank Speech in the complaint. Coomer added that Lindell had posted “numerous false statements, defamatory interviews, and other dishonest content” maligning him on Frank Speech, along with “a sales pitch for products from MyPillow.”
Coomer also said that Lindell made claims about him at the pillow CEO’s cyber-symposium in August in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where Lindell spent 72 hours pushing debunked voter-fraud claims.
“Despite Defendants’ baseless claims of election fraud being disproven by credible authorities across political parties, they persist in their campaign to profit from the ‘Big Lie’ by destroying the lives of private individuals like Dr. Coomer,” read the court filing. “They have not acknowledged the harm they have caused, nor have they retracted any of their false statements.”
The filing added that Coomer received “frequent credible death threats,” which they attributed to the “unwarranted distrust” inspired by what he said were Lindell’s “lies.”
Coomer has, separately, sued the Trump campaign and its allies for defamation.
When asked about the lawsuit and the possibility of being sued by more individuals linked to Dominion, Lindell demurred and said that people like Coomer were “trying to cancel (his) voice.”
“MyPillow and Frank Speech didn’t do nothing. I don’t even know if I’ve ever mentioned Eric Coomer,” Lindell told Insider. “They’re trying to cancel Frank Speech, your favorite show!”
Insider found, however, that Lindell actually mentioned Coomer on the Frank Speech platform last year. In September, Lindell appeared on Frank Speech and urged Coomer to surrender to the authorities for a reduced prison term of “10 to 20 years.”
“Eric Coomer, if I were you right now, instead of going over and making deals at Newsmax, if I were you, I’m turning myself in and turning in the whole operation,” he said, “so maybe, just maybe you get immunity and you only get to do, I dunno, ten to twenty years.”
It’s unclear what Lindell was referring to here, as Coomer is not facing any criminal indictments.
“You’re disgusting and you are treasonous. You are a traitor to the United States of America. You know what, I can say that, just like I can about Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger,” Lindell said. “These are things I have evidence of. The evidence is there. It’s sitting there.”
Lindell is currently facing a number of other lawsuits. He is being sued by voting tech companies Dominion and Smartmatic for pushing baseless election claims. Dominion noted in a January court filing that there is no “realistic possibility” of it settling its $1.3 billion lawsuit with Lindell, given the “devastating harm” he and Trump allies Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell caused the company.
Kevin Strickland, 62, was exonerated Tuesday morning after serving decades at Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron, Missouri. Strickland was convicted in 1979 of one count of capital murder and two counts of second-degree murder in a triple homicide. He received a 50-year life sentence without the possibility for parole for a crime that, over the years, he maintained he had not been involved in.
Senior Judge James Welsh dismissed all criminal counts against Strickland. His release makes his confinement the longest wrongful imprisonment in Missouri history and one of the longest in the nation, according to The National Registry of Exonerations.
The Midwest Innocence Project created a GoFundMe account to help Strickland restart his life, since he doesn’t qualify for help from the state of Missouri.
In Missouri, only those exonerated through DNA testing are eligible for a $50 per day of post-conviction confinement, according to the Innocence Project. That was not the case for Strickland.
As of early Thursday afternoon, donations for Strickland had topped $910,000.
The fund was created over the summer with a goal of raising $7,500, which the fund says would amount to approximately $175 dollars for every year Strickland spent wrongfully convicted.
Thirty-six states and Washington, DC, have laws on the books that offer compensation for exonerees, according to the Innocence Project. The federal standard to compensate those who are wrongfully convicted is a minimum of $50,000 per year of incarceration, plus an additional amount for each year spent on death row.
Adjusting to a new world
Strickland said he learned of his release through a breaking news report that interrupted the soap opera he was watching Tuesday.
The first thing he did after his release was visit his mother’s grave.
“To know my mother was underneath that dirt and I hadn’t gotten a chance to visit with her in the last years … I revisited those tears that I did when they told me I was guilty of a crime I didn’t commit,” Strickland told CNN’s Brianna Keilar Wednesday.
His first night out of prison was a restless one, where thoughts of returning to prison, among others, kept him awake, he said Wednesday.
“I’m used to living in a close, confined cell where I know exactly what’s going on in there with me,” he said. “And being home and you hear the creaks of the home settling and the electrical wiring and whatever else … I was kind of afraid. I thought somebody was coming to get me.”
Convicted as a teenager, exonerated as an adult
Four people were shot in Kansas City, Missouri, on April 25, 1978, resulting in three deaths, according to CNN affiliate KSHB. The only survivor of the crime, Cynthia Douglas, who died in 2015, testified in 1978 that Strickland was at the scene of the triple murder.
Douglas sustained a shotgun injury and told police then that Vincent Bell and Kiln Adkins were two of the perpetrators. But she did not identify Strickland, who she knew, as being at the scene until a day later, according to KSHB, after it was suggested to her Strickland’s hair matched Douglas’ description of the shooter. Douglas claimed her initial failure to identify him was due to the use of cognac and marijuana, according to KSHB.
But for the past 30 years, she has been saying that she made a mistake and falsely identified Strickland. According to KSHB, Douglas made efforts to free Strickland through the Midwest Innocence Project.
The two assailants she identified at the scene both pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and each ended up serving about 10 years in prison for the crimes, according to Strickland’s attorney, Robert Hoffman.
Dr. Dre‘s divorce has been extremely contentious, and something happened Monday that punctuates the bitterness … a process server for his ex-wife attempted to serve him with legal docs at the cemetery where he buried his grandmother.
Sources with direct knowledge tell TMZ … Dre was at a Los Angeles cemetery Monday to put the woman who helped raise him in her final resting place.
There’s a dispute over where exactly Dre was confronted by the process server. Sources connected to Dre tell TMZ … a process server came up to him at the burial site as Dre was standing by his grandma’s casket and tried serving him. Sources connected to Nicole Young tell TMZ … Dre was served in the cemetery’s parking lot after the burial.
Either way … we’re told Dre recoiled in anger and wouldn’t take the documents in hand. Our Dre sources claim the process server dropped the documents by the gravesite. Our Nicole sources say they were dropped in the parking lot.
The papers involved payment of Nicole’s attorney’s fees. There’s a dispute over how much he was supposed to pay. The music mogul paid $325,433. The judge signed an order that he owed a total of $1,550,000. Dre believes that amount is in error and he paid the full fee. Nicole says the order is clear … Dre owes a balance of $1,224,567. The legal docs that were served included the judge’s final order of $1,550,000.
Either way … this divorce is about as acrimonious as it gets.
The US court documents, seen by CNN, show the legal papers were delivered to the duke’s lawyer, Andrew B. Brettler, at the law firm of Lavely and Singer in Los Angeles on Monday morning at 9:22 a.m. local time.
The court document also shows legal papers being delivered to the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Monday.
Giuffre says that the assaults happened in London, New York and the US Virgin Islands, that Andrew was aware that she was a minor (17) when it started, and that she had been trafficked by the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Andrew, 61, has consistently denied the claims, telling the BBC in 2019: “It didn’t happen. I can absolutely categorically tell you it never happened. I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever.”
Brettler, his lawyer, has called the case “baseless, non-viable (and) potentially unlawful.”
Andrew’s team had previously said that he had not been properly served notice of proceedings, despite Giuffre’s legal team saying papers were served at the prince’s home in Windsor, England.
His lawyers also say a 2009 settlement between Giuffre and Epstein released the duke from “any and all liability,” though that settlement was and remains sealed.
Last week, US District Judge Lewis Kaplan approved a request from Giuffre’s legal team to seek alternative means of serving a lawsuit against Andrew.
Kaplan, approving the request Thursday evening, said that “service of the defendant’s United States counsel is reasonably calculated to bring the papers served to the defendant’s attention, regardless of whether his US counsel is ‘authorized’ to accept service on his behalf.”
Andrew’s legal team said they would not comment when asked by CNN.
NEW YORK, Sept 21 (Reuters) – Britain’s Prince Andrew has been served with a sexual assault lawsuit in the United States by lawyers for a woman who says she was forced to have sex with him at the London home of a friend of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, court papers show.
In a filing with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, lawyers for Virginia Giuffre said they sent the civil lawsuit to the prince’s Los Angeles-based lawyer Andrew Brettler by email and FedEx, and both copies had been received by Monday morning.
Under federal rules, the Duke of York has 21 days to respond or could face a default judgment. Giuffre’s lawyers previously said they also served Andrew, who is Queen Elizabeth’s second son, in Britain.
Andrew and his lawyers have denied Giuffre’s claims. The 61-year-old prince has not been charged with crimes. Giuffre’s Aug. 9 lawsuit seeks unspecified damages. read more
Brettler did not respond to a request for comment. There was no comment from the prince’s London legal team.
Giuffre, 38, accused Andrew of forcing her to have sex when she was underage at the London home of Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
She also said Andrew abused her at around the same time in Epstein’s mansion in Manhattan and on Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Britain’s Prince Andrew leaves St Mary the Virgin church in Hillington, near royal Sandringham estate, in Norfolk, Britain January 19, 2020. REUTERS/Chris Radburn/File Photo
Read More
Epstein, a financier and registered sex offender, killed himself in a Manhattan jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Giuffre sued under New York’s Child Victims Act, a 2019 law giving survivors of childhood sexual abuse a window to sue their alleged abusers over conduct that occurred many years or decades earlier. The deadline to sue has since passed.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversees Giuffre’s lawsuit, has urged both sides not to dwell on “technicalities” and instead to focus on the case’s substance.
“I can see a lot of legal fees being spent and time being expended and delay, which ultimately may not be terribly productive for anyone,” Kaplan said at a Sept. 13 hearing.
Last week London’s High Court said it would arrange for Andrew to be served if the parties failed to work out their own arrangement and gave the prince’s lawyers a week to appeal that decision.
A source close to the Duke’s lawyers said it was highly unlikely any challenge would be pursued now. read more
Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to criminal charges she helped recruit and groom underage girls for Epstein to abuse. Her trial is Nov. 29.
Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York
Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Angus MacSwan
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Los Angeles attorney Andrew Brettler, who appeared virtually during a pre-trial teleconference in New York on behalf of Andrew on Monday, said the prince’s legal team would challenge the validity of the lawsuit.
Brettler referenced a settlement that Andrew’s lawyers said Giuffre had previously entered, precluding her from pursuing litigation against anyone connected to convicted pedophileJeffrey Epstein.
“We believe, however, that this is a baseless, non-viable and potentially unlawful lawsuit that plaintiff has filed against the Duke. There has been a settlement agreement that the plaintiff has entered into in a prior action that releases the Duke and others from any and all potential liability,” Brettler said.
Giuffre accuses Andrew of having sex with her when she was a minor, and filed a civil lawsuit against the prince in New York in August. Andrew has denied similar allegations from Giuffre in the past.
But the case can’t proceed until judicial authorities determine that legal papers have been legally served to the prince. Brettler said Monday that the Duke of York’s legal team had been in contact with the High Court in the United Kingdom which they say must weigh in on the service — or formal notification — of the lawsuit.
Giuffre’s lawyers say this has been done. In an affidavit filed in the Southern District of New York on Friday, a process server hired by Giuffre’s legal team to give formal notice of the lawsuit to Andrew said he left the papers with the Metropolitan Police security detail at the main gates of the prince’s home, the Royal Lodge in Windsor, on August 27.
“We’ve proceeded to serve Prince Andrew in several ways pursuant to Article 10 of the Hague Convention,” an attorney for Giuffre, David Boies, said during Monday’s hearing.
Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan and attorneys for Giuffre agreed it was premature to discuss the previous settlement agreement with Epstein, which is currently sealed in another civil action in the Southern District of New York.
“I think we are making this more complicated that it already is,” the judge said in court Monday.
Kaplan ordered a schedule for the parties to file procedural motions that will play out before he makes a decision on the service of the lawsuit and whether that settlement agreement should be shared with the Prince’s counsel. An in-person hearing in New York is scheduled for October 13.
CNN reached out to attorneys for both parties for comment.
Giuffre says she was trafficked by Epstein and forced to have sex with his friends, including Prince Andrew, the Queen’s second son, when she was a minor. While Andrew has denied the claims, he has been seen in photos with Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite and former girlfriend of Epstein who is currently charged with conspiracy and sex trafficking amongst other charges.
US authorities have previously accused Andrew of not cooperating with attempts to interview him as part of the investigation into the alleged sex trafficking ring Epstein and Maxwell are suspected of operating.
The Prince stepped back from royal duties in the wake of a 2019 interview he gave the BBC in which he was widely considered to have damaged his own credibility. He now rarely appears in public.
Video of the awkward moment shows John Cox being served court documents during his opening remarks of the debate at the Guild Theater in Sacramento, California.
“John Cox, you’ve been served (by the) San Diego Superior Court, ordered by the judge,” a man yelled, throwing the documents onstage.
The man, identified as a private investigator by The Los Angeles Times, was asked to leave shortly after, video shows. Cox continued speaking despite the interruption.
Cox, a businessman and multimillionaire, was served with a subpoena from the San Diego Superior Court because his campaign allegedly failed to pay a political advertising firm about $100,000 for political ads, attorney’s fees and other incurred costs from Cox’s unsuccessful run for governor in 2018 against Newsom, according to the Times.
CNN has reached out to the San Diego Superior Court for additional details and to Cox for comment.
Cox was participating in Tuesday’s debate alongside two other Republican hopefuls, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and Rocklin Assemblyman Kevin Kiley. The four other candidates invited included Newsom, Republican front-runner Larry Elder, reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner and former US Rep. Doug Ose.
Newsom and Elder both declined participating in the debate, while Jenner did not respond, a debate moderator said.
Ose had agreed to the debate, but on Tuesday he ended his Republican recall candidacy after being treated for a heart attack on Sunday.
The hour-long debate was hosted by the Sacramento Press Club and cosponsored by the Sacramento Bee and CapRadio.
The candidates fielded questions about the Covid-19 pandemic response, housing, wildfires and drought, and the state economy and unemployment.
The California recall election is set for September 14. California voters will be asked two questions on the ballot: First, “yes” or “no” on whether they want to recall Newsom and second, to select from a list of candidates to replace him.
CNN’s Alex Rogers and Maeve Reston contributed to this report.
Unlike numerous other animals, cats show a strange unwillingness to work for their food.
When given the choice between a freely available meal and a meal trapped inside a puzzle, scientists have found most animals, such as dogs, bears, pigeons, pigs, goats, mice, rats, monkeys and other primates, prefer to work for their food – a concept known as contrafreeloading.
Cats stand out amongst other animals in that they seem to favor an easy meal; however, that’s not necessarily because they’re lazy, as we’ll explain below.
When researchers provided a small sample of indoor cats with a food puzzle and a tray of food in a home environment, the pets ate more food from the free tray than from the puzzle. Even the most energetic individuals preferred to stick to the easy meal, according to activity sensors they wore during the study.
“It wasn’t that cats never used the food puzzle, but cats ate more food from the tray, spent more time at the tray and made more first choices to approach and eat from the tray rather than the puzzle,” explains Mikel Delgado, a cat behaviorist at the University of California Davis.
Eight cats never even bothered to touch the puzzle, despite having the opportunity to do so for 30 minutes, and none of the cats ate more food from the puzzle than from the open tray.
(Mikel Delgado/UC Davis)
The results add weight to the findings from a small lab study, conducted in 1971, which first revealed a lack of contrafreeloading among cats.
In this historic experiment, six domesticated cats were trained to operate a food dispenser. They were then given the choice between the food puzzle and a free bowl of kibble in a laboratory setting.
Unlike every other animal that had been tested in similar ways, the cats in these experiments showed a clear preference for the free meal.
Now, it seems like even in a home setting, these creatures make the same choices, regardless of their sex, age or previous puzzle experience.
“There is an entire body of research that shows that most species including birds, rodents, wolves, primates – even giraffes – prefer to work for their food,” says Delgado.
“What’s surprising is out of all these species cats seem to be the only ones that showed no strong tendency to contrafreeload.”
Why that is remains a mystery. It’s not that cats don’t like food puzzles. Most cat owners know their pets enjoy working for a reward when it’s trapped inside a tricky container, and it’s good for their enrichment, too.
Given how active the cats in the new study were, laziness also seems like the wrong explanation.
Perhaps domestication has something to do with it. In a home setting, where food is easily available, cats might be less driven to explore and hunt in their environment. After all, conserving energy is something cats do really well. Yet other domesticated pets and captive animals in similar situations still prefer to tackle the harder meal over the easier one.
Another hypothesis may have to do with how cats have evolved to obtain their meals. Unlike foraging animals that search for their food, cats are predators that ambush their prey. A food puzzle might therefore not be the best way to stimulate their interest.
That said, in 2016, Delgado published another study that found food puzzles can help cats with weight loss, anxiety and litter box training. That suggests food puzzles really are good for their brains and may help them develop, although this is a relatively new area of research.
With just 17 cats providing sufficient data by the end of Delgado’s more recent study, the sample size is small; the team also did not control for the hunger of the cats tested. That said, given how much the cats ate in the experiments, the authors think it’s unlikely the pets were uninterested in the food provided.
Beyond simple curiosity, researchers say it’s worth finding out why cats do not seem to prefer a food puzzle over a free meal. The answer could help us appease the curiosity of our cats when they are stuck indoors, to increase their wellbeing all around.
“Understanding contrafreeloading is important for captive and domestic animal welfare as foraging enrichment is a frequently used tool to provide choice and mental stimulation,” the authors write.
“The effects of such enrichment on the behavior of captive animals are rarely tested.”
