LOS ANGELES -- The former owner of a Beverly Hills-based magazine has filed a complaint seeking $5 million from actor Tom Cruise, celebrity lawyer Bertram Fields and private investigator Anthony Pellicano that claims he was illegally wiretapped after Cruise filed a defamation suit against him.
Michael Davis Sapir, in a suit filed in Superior Court, claimed that Pellicano, working for Cruise and Fields, intercepted at least 1,000 conversations before the defamation suit was settled. Cruise filed the complaint after Sapir's Bold Magazine offered a $500,000 reward in 2001 for videotaped evidence that Cruise was gay. The magazine subsequently issued a press release claiming it had received a response to the offer.
Pellicano allegedly overheard conversations between Sapir and his lawyer about litigation strategy that included Sapir's "fear that Cruise had vastly greater resources with which to pursue the matter, and that despite the strength of (Sapir's) case, the risk of financial ruination was too great."
As a result, Cruise and Fields allegedly were able "to extort terms of settlement" that included a stipulation that Cruise did not appear on the videotape and has never had a homosexual affair.
The complaint was filed by Christopher Grivakes of Ives, Kirwan & Dibble and David W. Affeld.
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