The most ridiculous Borat lawsuit yet
Despite the fact that he only appeared on screen for a few seconds, Jeffrey Lemerond is suing the producers of Borat for unspecified damages over a scene in the film where Lemerond is seen "fleeing in apparent terror" from the faux-Kazakh reporter and screaming "Go away!" as actor Sacha Baron Cohen tries to hug him on New York's Fifth Avenue. The scene was used repeatedly in trailers (with Lemerond's face blurred out), but is unscrambled in the actual film. Lemerond claims to have suffered "public ridicule, degradation, and humiliation" as a result.
Incidentally, Lemerond filed—and immediately withdrew—an identical state court suit against Cohen, director Larry Charles, and producer Jay Roach back in January, but seems to have wised up with this federal lawsuit, going directly after Twentieth Century Fox. (Little wonder, considering Lemerond is a former financial analyst for the controversial Carlyle Group—and therefore maybe deserves all the public degradation he can get.)