Wrestling star Charlotte Flair hurled racist remarks at cops in Chapel Hill, lawsuit says
A $5.5 million lawsuit filed against wresting icon Ric Flair and wrestling star daughter Charlotte alleges she became an “out of control aggressor” during a police incident in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that included “disparaging and racist comments.”
The lawsuit was filled earlier this month in Mecklenburg County by Charlotte Flair’s ex husband, Riki Paul Johnson, who says Ric and Charlotte Flair’s 2017 book “Second Nature” defamed him with multiple “falsehoods.”
The lawsuit also names World Wrestling Entertainment and Brian Shields as defendants. Shields co-authored the book with Ric and Charlotte Flair.
Ric and Charlotte Flair have not issued a comment on the suit, but CourthouseNew.com reports the WWE issued a statement noting: “We recently received what appears to be a meritless lawsuit and we will vigorously defend ourselves.”
Johnson brings up the alleged racist comments of Charlotte Flair as part of his defense, saying she was “the aggressor in a physical and verbal tirade...directed at the responding police officers, as well as disparaging and racist comments being directed at the Afro-American community in Chapel Hill.”
Details of when the alleged incident occurred are not given in the lawsuit. However, WTVD reported in 2008 that Charlotte Flair was arrested in Chapel Hill and charged with assault on a law enforcement officer in connection with an argument involving Ric and Charlotte Flair and “an unidentified 22-year-old man.”
The incident is described in “Second Nature,” which says the unidentified man was Riki Johnson, now 32. The book says Charlotte Flair was arrested while trying to be “peacekeeper” between Ric Flair and Riki Johnson.
“Police arrived, and all hell broke loose,” says a passage in Flair’s book. “When one of the police officers entered her (Charlotte’s) space and asked her to put her hands behind her back, I heard her say, ‘Don’t touch me. I said don’t touch me.’ The next thing I knew, the officer used a Taser to subdue her. She was brought to the floor and taken into police custody in handcuffs.”
Among the “false assertions” that Johnson cites in his lawsuit are statements in the book that he was physically and psychologically abusive of both Ric Flair and his daughter, and that he is sterile. (Johnson says in the lawsuit that his current wife is pregnant with their child.)
He also disputes a section in the book that says he was fired from two jobs for drug abuse.
Johnson says the false claims were made to promote Charlotte Flair’s “reputation and WWE marketability” as someone who “overcame personal adversity and domestic abuse.”
He says she is also trying to mine publicity as a “victim” from “the burgeoning #MeToo movement.”
“The false assertions in the book were purposely designed to willfully, maliciously and intentionally inflect emotional distress,” says the lawsuit.
Johnson says he has been “subjected to national ridicule, contempt and disgrace.”
CourtroomNews.com reports K&L Gates is representing the WWE in the lawsuit, and it “successfully petitioned” to have the case moved into federal court in Charlotte last week.
This story was originally published October 22, 2018 at 11:34 AM.