A $750 million defamation lawsuit by Burke Ramsey against the CBS Corporation over a 2016 documentary about the 1996 murder of his 6-year-old sister, JonBenet Ramsey, will go forward after a judge’s ruling Friday that the complaint should not be dismissed.
Michigan 3rd Circuit Court District Judge David Groner issued a six-page ruling Friday denying a motion by CBS and other defendants in the suit asking that he toss the case out.
In a separate ruling, he also denied a defense motion asking that a separate $150 million complaint filed by Burke Ramsey against Werner Spitz, a pathologist who participated in the documentary, be dismissed.
Burke Ramsey, now 30, filed suit in December 2016 over the two-part series, “The Case Of: JonBenet Ramsey,” which aired in September 2016.
According to Burke Ramsey’s suit, “The gist of ‘The Case Of: JonBenet Ramsey’ is that JonBenet’s brother, Burke Ramsey, killed his 6-year-old sister.” It went on to state, “The gist of ‘The Case Of: JonBenet Ramsey’ is false and defamatory per se. Burke Ramsey did not kill his sister and had no involvement in her brutal murder.”
In Friday’s ruling, Groner stated that “the statements at issue and the docu-series as a whole could reasonably be understood as stating actual facts” about Burke Ramsey. And, he stated, “This court does not find that the ‘disclaimer’ at the beginning and end of the program negate the docu-series potentially defamatory meaning.”
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