Mother of teen guest on Tyra Banks Show sues for $3 mill


Beverly McClendon filed a $3 million lawsuit against Banks, Warner Bros. Entertainment and the executive producers of Banks’ now-defunct daytime TV talk show in federal court in Atlanta last week. In documents obtained by Reuters, McClendon claims that in 2009, the show called her daughter on her cell phone after she’d responded to a request on the show’s website seeking “sex addicts.”

The lawsuit alleges that the girl was then picked up from her Georgia home in a limo, and flown to New York, where she was put up in a hotel, all without McClendon’s knowledge.

McClendon filed a missing person’s report with local police when she realized her daughter was gone. McClendon claims her daughter was paid for her appearance on the “Tyra Banks Show,” and takes the show’s producers to task for allegedly unlawfully employing her child.

McClendon says that to employ her child legally, producers needed to get written consent from the Commissioner of Labor in Georgia. She goes on to claim that producers had a legal duty to obtain parental consent to fly her to New York, put her up in a hotel room alone, and have her appear on TV.

McClendon doesn’t only claim that her daughter was hired behind her back to appear on the show. In her lawsuit, she also alleges that her daughter’s appearance on the show, where minors talk openly about their sexual activity, put her in danger.

“This show was undoubtedly watched by sexual deviants, perverts and pedophiles alike,” McClendon says in the complaint.

She also claims her daughter has never been diagnosed as a sex addict.

McClendon is asking for an injunction against further distribution of her child’s TV appearance, in addition to compensatory damages of $1 million and punitive damages of $2 million.


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