The local community college that disinvited Tom Daley’s boyfriend from speaking at a commencement ceremony last year after discovering his sex tape online agreed to pay him $3,000 for the ordeal, as well as an additional $26,050 to not sue them.
Pasadena Community College eventually let DLB give their 2014 commencement speech when some great reporting by the school’s newspaper inspired the Oscar-winning screenwriter to publicly condemn the school for slut shaming him.
Details of the deal were never reported publicly until this week, when the LA Times discovered the settlement agreement in documents obtained through a Public Records Act request.
The school’s Academic Senate president Eduardo Cairo called the settlement money a “complete misuse of public funds,” adding the AC was “extremely disappointed to hear that has happened.”
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DLB has refused to comment on the agreement and a spokesperson for the school told the Times “the issue with Mr. Black has been resolved, and the district has no further comment at this time.”
Add this $26,050 to the $100,000 judgement Black received against the person who originally posted his sex tape online back in 2008, and we’d call it a pretty profitable “mistake.”
Rob Seneca
DLB received no money from the Pasadena college. http://www.latimes.com/local/abcarian/la-me-ra-dustin-lance-black-responds-20141015-column.html
throwslikeagirl
Thank you, Rob Seneca, for the referral to the LA Times story, that more fully covers this matter. DLB received no money; the money went to lawyers. Those lawyers were obtained by DLB on demand from the college, as the college refused to speak directly to him. He also never received the $3K standard honorarium for speaking. He said he’d refuse it. All too often poor reporting results in folks thinking negatively about celebrities. It’s good to get a more complete picture. I also understand there’s no truth to the tabloid news story saying that either Mr. Daly or Mr. Black is pregnant.
schwma
The school’s Academic Senate president Eduardo Cairo called the settlement money a “complete misuse of public funds.”
Well, then, the school shouldn’t have acted in that fashion. I’d say they got off pretty light, all things considered.
Billy Budd
I wish the lawyers’ fee was much higher. $26,000 is not enough.
vive
@throwslikeagirl, @Rob Seneca, you (and DLB) are making it seem as if he was “forced” to hire lawyers by the college. However, it appears that he was the one who wanted them to “talk” to him in the first place, I suppose to threaten legal action for the disinvitation.
The college showed bad judgment, I agree, but it does seem to be poor and predatory use of public funds to expect the college to pay a famous and rich celebrity’s legal fees for a legal action he initiated, or threatened to initiate. He doesn’t need that money to pay his lawyers, but there are many students and staff at that community college who could well have used it.
IcarusD
@vive: DLB is rich? I would be very surprised if that were true. Writers are about the lowest paid people in Hollywood.
evdanker
Breach of contract is breach of contract, no matter how rich or poor you may be. There are always consequences for poor judgement.
Mr. Z
The lesson here is, don’t mess with DLB. The college could have avoided the payout by not rescinding the invite in the first place. He offered to do it for free.
Stache99
@IcarusD: He has a net worth of 5 million.
Rob Seneca
@vive: Who was responsible for the attack on DLB’s character? The College Administration. By law they are the ones liable for costs. not, DLB. Would you have forked up $26,000 dollars? I don’t think so.
Rob Seneca
@Mr. Z: Exactly.
Rob Seneca
@vive: You are making the victim guilty of the crime.
Rob Seneca
@Mr. Z: It should be noted that rescinding the invitation was not the problem.The problem was that in emails by the administration, they said that DLB was morally not a good choice.
IcarusD
@Stache99: WOW! Really? Just Googled it and CelebrityNetWorth.com confirms $5 mill. (Who knew that was a site?) That’s a lot of money for writers who aren’t publishing on the scale of, say, Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. I wonder how they were able to determine that. The site doesn’t identify their sources.
vive
@Rob Seneca, oh come off it, there was no “breach of contract” or “attack of character” except in the sense that Miss Thing had a hissy fit and wanted to teach someone a lesson, no matter the cost to the students of the community college involved. I am an academic and when regular academics get invited to speak somewhere, we are lucky if we get paid cost of travel, so I have no sympathy for rich (and yes, he is rich, come off it) celebrities getting paid thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, to speak for an hour, and acting all aggrieved when something gets inthe way of that.
Sure, the college handled this stupidly, but who is responsible for trying to take money away from poor students in this case. DLB is who. He didn’t have to threaten to sue. Where did he think the funds to pay him (to pay lawyers he wouldn”t have needed in the first place if he didn’t pursue this) were going to come from? The students and the taxpayers, that’s who. If he wanted to punish someone, he should have sued the responsible adminstrator(s), not the college.
Mr. Z
@vive: It’s cute that you think you deserve to be paid as much as an Oscar winner to grace students with your presence…when that is your job.
Rob Seneca
@vive: You seem to have a bone to chew. That says more about your attitude than about the facts.
vive
@Rob Seneca, the facts are there independent of my attitude. I would recommend you inform yourself on them before opining.
ait10101
@vive: I am also an academic. Sometimes I get paid pretty well to give an hour talk. If I had my moral character besmirched by officials I would certainly feel I had the right and perhaps the obligation to sue.
Rob Seneca
@vive: Need to have the last word, do you?
YesIDid
C’mon, he’s got Tom Daley to tap every night. What more does he want?