Gruner + Jahr Publishing Co., the publishers of Rosie magazine, filed a $100 million lawsuit Tuesday against former talk show host Rosie O’Donnell for quitting their business partnership last month.
G+J said in court papers that O’Donnell‘s decision to leave the magazine has or will cost them more than $100 million dollars in damages, Reuters reports.
The filing also claims the relationship between G+J and O’Donnell “…changed drastically beginning in July 2002, when O’Donnell, having recently terminated her daytime television talk show, began…to behave erratically and in defiance of her contractual commitments to G+J.”
The lawsuit, which seeks damages in excess of $300 million from O’Donnell and her production company Lucky Charms Entertainment, Inc., hardly comes as a surprise. O’Donnell‘s Sept. 18 announcement that she was quitting Rosie came after months of public feuding about the direction of the magazine.
O’Donnell said she was promised editorial freedom from publisher G+J when the publication launched 18 months ago, but that the company had moved to take that control away in the past two months.
The publication–a joint venture in which O’Donnell and G+J each received a 50 percent stake in the business–was set to breathe new life into the struggling McCall’s magazine.
But G+J says that without O’Donnell‘s influence, the publication will just be another woman’s magazine. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Rosie‘s total average paid circulation dropped slightly in the last six months from 3.6 million to 3.5.
O’Donnell spokeswoman Cindi Berger told The Associated Press that O’Donnell will also be seeking justice from the court.
“Rosie plans on fighting this aggressively. Her name and integrity is at stake,” Berger said. “She will be coutersuing.”
