Last month, a judge formally dismissed Brett Favre’s defamation suit against Fox Sports analyst Shannon Sharpe. But it sounds like Favre isn’t ready to give up that legal battle just yet.
According to A.J. Perez of Front Office Sports, Brett Favre has filed an appeal of the judge’s decision.
“NEWS: Brett Favre will appeal a federal judge’s decision to dismiss the defamation lawsuit he filed against Shannon Sharpe. The notice of appeal to the 5th Circuit was filed tonight,” A.J. Perez of Front Office Sports wrote in a post for X, the social media website that was formerly known as Twitter.
NEWS: Brett Favre will appeal a federal judge's decision to dismiss the defamation lawsuit he filed against Shannon Sharpe. The notice of appeal to the 5th Circuit was filed tonight. https://t.co/usBYTN2ypL
— A.J. Perez (@byajperez) November 30, 2023
The origin of the defamation suit stems from comments that Sharpe made during an episode of ‘Undisputed’ where he said that Favre “stole money from people that really needed that money.” However, the judge who dismissed the case determined that nobody could reasonably think that Favre was literally stealing money from poor people based on Sharpe’s comments.
“No reasonable person listening to the broadcast would think that Favre actually went into the homes of poor people and took their money — that he committed the crime of theft/larceny against any particular poor person in Mississippi,” the judge wrote. “Sharpe’s comments were made against the backdrop of longstanding media coverage of Favre’s role in the welfare scandal and the state’s lawsuit against Favre. Listeners would have recognized Sharpe’s statements as rhetorical hyperbole.”
The appeals process could a year or longer, so we may not have a final answer in this case for quite a while.
