Patrick Reed has refiled his $750 million defamation lawsuit against the Golf Channel and its broadcaster Brandel Chamblee, adding more of the network’s personalities as defendants to his claim, according to his attorney, Larry Klayman.
Reed — who is a nine-time PGA Tour winner — named Golf Channel employees Damon Hack, Shane Bacon and Eamon Lynch, along with parent companies Golfweek and Gannett, as defendants in the new lawsuit, per The Athletic.
Klayman filed the new suit on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida in Jacksonville, just over six weeks after Reed’s original suit was filed in Texas on Aug. 16.
According to The Athletic, the refiled suit lists examples of Hack, Bacon and Lynch offering critiques of Reed’s play and past controversies on Golf Channel broadcasts, and an article written by Lynch in Golfweek, which is owned by Gannett media company.
The refiled suit claims that Golf Channel and its personalities have acted in “a pattern and practice of defaming Mr. Reed, misreporting information with actual knowledge of falsity and/or reckless disregard of the truth, that is with actual and constitutional malice, purposely omitting pertinent key material facts to mislead the public, and actively targeting Mr. Reed since he was 23 years old, to destroy his reputation, create hate, and a hostile work environment for him, with the intention to discredit his name and accomplishments.”
Reed — who joined LIV Golf in June — claims in the suit that he lost multiple multimillion-dollar sponsorships as a result of the defamation. The 2018 Masters champion is seeking $750 million in actual and compensatory damages.
The suit claims Golf Channel, the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour are all “co-conspiratorial agents” aimed at overthrowing LIV Golf’s ascent as a professional golf league.
The new lawsuit also listed some of the same claims made in the original, which alleged that Chamblee and Golf Channel acted in concert with the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour to defame Reed’s character for most of the last decade.
The case was moved from Texas to Florida as the suit states that the defamatory practices “were intentionally published and perpetrated by the Defendants in the state of Florida, where the offending acts were accessed, read, opened, and viewed by numerous third-party Florida residents and citizens.”
The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida’s jurisdiction includes Ponte Vedra Beach, which is where the PGA Tour is headquartered. The PGA Tour and LIV Golf both host events in Florida.
Reed, 32, withdrew from this week’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on the DP World Tour.
The pro told the Irish Golfer that he pulled out of the event due to a back injury he sustained from a hotel mattress that was “too soft.”
