WWE, Vince McMahon face new lawsuit seeking $500 million in damages for 'stealing intellectual property'
A man named Leland Owens has filed a lawsuit against both Vince and Stephanie McMahon, accusing them of stealing his ideas and failing to honour verbal agreements made in the past. Owens is seeking $500 million in damages for the ideas he claims he gave to WWE.
World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and its founder Vince McMahon are no strangers to lawsuits, but a recent legal dispute facing the wrestling promotion and its former chairman is bizarre even for WWE.
CREDIT: WWE
Lawsuit against Vince McMahon
A man named Leland Owens has filed a lawsuit against both Vince and Stephanie McMahon, accusing them of stealing his ideas and failing to honour verbal agreements made in the past.
Owens first filed a lawsuit in August this year, claiming that WWE had entered into a verbal agreement with him in Yakima Lower Valley but that he ¡°never got paid¡± after coming to the agreement.
Owens claimed that, as part of the agreement, he gave ideas to WWE but was never compensated for them.
Allegations of hush-money
The lawsuit, which was filed in the United States District Court of the Eastern District of Washington, was dismissed in September, after which Owens filed a new petition.
He alleged that WWE wrestlers Daniel Bryan and Sasha Banks were sent by WWE to deliver Owens a cheque for $100,000 as ¡°hush money¡± in response to comments made by Stephanie McMahon about Owens¡¯ daughter.
CREDIT: WWE
Owens is seeking $500 million in damages for the ideas he claims he gave to WWE.
Many observers, however, dismissed Owens's claim of giving ideas to Vince, who is known to run WWE and its programming according to his own vision and is not known for seeking outside opinions on how to operate the world¡¯s most successful professional wrestling company.
Other lawsuits against Vince McMahon
Vince, however, is facing more serious lawsuits, including several charges of sexual abuse and cover-up.
In 2022, he was forced to step down as CEO of WWE after it emerged that he had paid millions of dollars to a former employee to cover up sexual abuse allegations.
CREDIT: WWE
In January this year, he stepped down as chairman of TKO, WWE¡¯s parent company, after another sexual assault and trafficking allegation surfaced.
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Bobins Abraham is the Assistant News Editor at Indiatimes. He has more than twelve years of experience in TV and digital journalism. An avid student of history and geopolitics, he is a conservationist and environmentalist at heart. He writes on environment, sustainability, human-animal conflict and more.
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