James Woods can dish it out on social media, but he can’t take it. At least, that’s the takeaway from a new court filing in the lawsuit that the actor filed against a Twitter user who called Woods a cocaine addict.
The anonymous defendant in the case is asking for Woods’ lawsuit to be tossed out, alleging that he routinely insults others via social media, but can’t handle it when he himself is insulted.
“Like a bully who can dish it our but can’t take it, Mr. Woods uses his wealth and fame to abuse the court system in order to punish and bully an obscure and much less powerful Twitter user who taunted him,” the filing reads.
Woods filed his $10 million lawsuit in July, claiming that a Twitter user who goes by the handle Abe List falsely called the actor a “cocaine addict” in a July tweet, thus jeopardizing Woods’ “good name and reputation on an international scale.”
But the new filing claims that Woods’ lawsuit doesn’t pass the sniff test, saying that the actor has routinely derided people on Twitter.
Among the allegations in the new filing: That Woods “fantasizes about killing a man in an offensive shirt”; “angrily calls Al Sharpton a ‘disgusting pig’ who is responsible for the murder of policemen”; and has accused Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner of “whacking off” to the Boston Marathon bomber.
“Regrettably Mr. Woods’ commitment to the First Amendment stops at his own keyboard,” the filing reads. “When [the defendant] responded to one of Mr. Woods’ provocative tweets with an insult, rather than respond with more words Mr. Woods brought this thoroughly frivolous and censorious lawsuit.”
The defendant is asking that the lawsuit be stricken by under California’s anti-SLAPP statute, which seeks to protect Californians’ free speech from meritless lawsuits. The new filing claims that the tweet calling Woods a cocaine addict was “rhetorical hyperbole plainly protected by the First Amendment.”
Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.