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ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia woman is suing Tyra Banks for $3 million after she said her 15-year-old daughter appeared without her permission on an episode of Banks’ talk show about teen sex addicts.
In a lawsuit filed Oct. 8 in federal court in Atlanta, Beverly McClendon claims the show contacted the teen on her cell phone after she responded to a request on the show’s website seeking "sex addicts." The girl was then picked up from her home in Georgia in a limo and flown to New York, where she was put up in a hotel, all without her mother’s knowledge, the lawsuit says.
McClendon filed a missing person report with local police when she realized her daughter was gone. The teen has never been diagnosed as a sex addict, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit also names Warner Bros. Entertainment and the executive producers of the show as defendants.
McClendon says her daughter suffered damages because the 2009 show "was undoubtedly watched by sexual deviants, perverts and pedophiles."
The lawsuit seeks a jury trial and asks for $1 million in compensatory damages and $2 million in punitive damages. It also asks the court to bar the episode from ever being aired again on television or online.
Warner Bros. Television Group spokesman Scott Rowe said Sunday that the company had no comment. Banks’ publicist, agent and lawyer did not immediately return calls Sunday seeking comment.
The show violated McClendon’s right to privacy by putting her daughter, who was a minor, on television without McClendon’s permission, the lawsuit claims.
The lawsuit also claims negligence, saying the teen was paid for her appearance but that the show didn’t get permission from the labor commissioner to employ her and didn’t get McClendon’s permission before paying the girl to fly to New York, stay in a hotel alone and appear on the show.
