By Mary Spicer
June 26, 2009 11:58 pm
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Meadville resident Lisa Miceli, who waged a lengthy legal battle against basketball legend Michael Jordan in an unsuccessful effort to have him legally declared father of her child, is waging a new legal battle in local courts.
That announcement was included in a civil action Miceli filed Friday in Crawford County Court of Common Pleas.
Representing herself, Miceli is now taking on actress Paris Hilton — and just about everyone involved in the latest version of “Paris Hilton’s My New BFF” reality competition series. Miceli said the show is based on her ideas and that they have been pirated away from her by Hilton and others.
“I’m trying to get an injunction to bar any of these media companies from using any part of me without pay,” Miceli said Friday evening, speaking from her Meadville home. “It’s my story that is being used. Her (Hilton’s) face is being used in front of my story. It’s a theft of intellectual property. ... She took the information off the top and used it as a reality show. The main point is to stop it immediately.”
In addition to Hilton, 28, plaintiffs listed on court papers filed Friday include “Ish Entertainment, MTV, Viacom, Lionsgate, tabloids and/or any advertising agencies that Paris Hilton partners with.” (The major players: “Paris Hilton’s My New BFF” series for MTV is the first project to come out of a partnership linking media giant Lionsgate, an independent film studio and producer and distributor of motion pictures and television programming, with Ish Entertainment in the production of original entertainment for television. The show’s producer, Michael Hirschorn, founded Ish Entertainment in early 2008. Media conglomerate Viacom owns MTV.)
BFF, by the way, translates from texting into traditional English as “best friend forever.”
The Middle East connection
The filming of Hilton’s latest search for a BFF is now under way in Dubai, which Associated Press described as “a glitzy sheikdom in the United Arab Emirates” in a June 18 story about the series.
According to AP, Hilton is scheduled to spend 20 days in the Emirates, weeding through 22 female contestants to find a new BFF. The finale will be filmed in Los Angeles.
The plan, Hirschorn told AP, is to build “My New BFF” into a global franchise — a move that will send Hilton around the world searching for new BFFs.
Two seasons have already been filmed in Los Angeles for MTV and one in London for British television. This time around, half the contestants — all of them women — are of Arab descent. The rest are Westerners.
In the civil action filed Friday, Miceli described starting an Internet diary blog in December 2005 telling her story of her “on again and off again” relationship with Jordan. “The intent of the blog was to attract investors for media deals, business deals and advertising deals,” Miceli told the court.
The blog, as well as numerous e-mail accounts, “were hacked into and erased and spread with threatening and hateful messages,” Miceli’s account continues.
Sometime around August 2008, Miceli met a gentleman from Dubai. Together, she writes, they “discussed and made plans for the future for both me and my son in the Middle East as a married couple.” All in all, she writes, more than 1,800 e-mails were exchanged.
According to Miceli, since the beginning of June, “Paris Hilton and her numerous media entities, have done a hostile takeover of Miceli’s life, career and relationships, in an attempt to stalk, harass, threaten, intimidate, interfere, use, abuse and distort in the media, Miceli’s personal relationship with His Highness Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Bin Al Maktoum of Dubai, which Miceli posted on her blogs about their pending plans.”
In June, Miceli’s account continues, Hilton and the entertainment entities and businesses started advertising the new BFF show in Dubai, where the man she describes as her “intended marriage partner” is a member of the ruling family.
According to Miceli, Hilton’s “business plans and plans to do reality show TV are exactly identical at times and very similar to Miceli’s suggested business plans and her life in the USA to (His Highness) and her previous relationships, as told on her blogs and in the media and in the e-mails and on her phones.”
An attorney from MTV she talked to was not receptive to her complaint, Miceli wrote.
Fearing what she describes as “media takeovers of her life,” Miceli indicated in the complaint that she has contacted police in both Dubai and Meadville as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Dubai police responded quickly and claimed that they would make sure it was taken to the proper department,” she wrote.
“No comment,” Meadville’s Assistant Chief Tom Liscinski said Friday afternoon when contacted by The Tribune.
Miceli said she appeared before Judge John Spataro on Friday. Monday, she hopes to learn when — or if — an evidentiary hearing will take place.
In 2007 and 2008, Miceli engaged in a long-running legal battle with Jordan’s representatives in Crawford County courts. The proceedings involved numerous allegations from both sides, based essentially on her claim that Jordan fathered her child. At one point, Miceli was shackled, removed from the courtroom and taken to the Crawford County jail for contempt of court after failing “to write a letter to the court stating she would comply with the court’s order to have no further contact with former basketball superstar Michael Jordan, his family and representatives,” according to Tribune reports.
Jordan said he was not the father of her child and that two DNA tests proved he was not, a claim that Miceli disputes. A 1990 Meadville Area Senior High graduate, Miceli met Jordan in 1999.
Mary Spicer can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at mspicer@meadvilletribune.com.
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