Check out the reason his attorneys say he shouldn’t have to pay!
CHICAGO – A federal judge on Tuesday refused to dismiss Chicago’s lawsuit against former “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett.
U.S. District Virginia Kendall’s ruling means that Chicago’s suit that seeks to recoup $130,000 that city officials say the police department spent investigating Smollett’s claim that he was a victim of a racist and homophobic attack in January can proceed.
The motion by the former “Empire” actor’s attorneys was a longshot because their argument boiled down to the contention that Smollett shouldn’t be required to reimburse the police department because he couldn’t have known how much time and money would be spent investigating his allegations.
The police conducted an exhaustive investigation that included nearly 1,900 hours of overtime as they looked into Smollett’s claim that he was beaten by two masked men on a downtown Chicago street in January and that they used racist and homophobic slurs and looped a noose around his neck before fleeing.
For days, detectives scoured the neighborhood for witnesses, analyzed dozens of videos from surveillance cameras on the street, on buildings and inside taxi cabs, and interviewed store owners in search of who might have sold the suspects the rope.
When Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson announced charges against Smollett, he angrily made clear the stakes of the investigation and why it was so important that police solve the case, saying that Smollett “took advantage of the pain and anger of racism to promote his career.”
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2019/oct/22/judge-allows-chicago-suit-against-jussie-smollett-/