A 15-year-old from Maryland says a single piece of news footage turned him into a national suspect, and now he wants more than $20 million for it. His lawsuit against CBS News, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., claims the network wrongly tied him to the vandalism of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in a story it later retracted.
The complaint names CBS Broadcasting and CBS Interactive and accuses them of defamation and invasion of privacy through false-light publicity. It seeks more than $10 million in compensatory damages and another $10 million in punitive damages, according to TheWrap. CBS News declined to comment, citing its policy on pending litigation.
How a Dirt Bike Stop Ended Up on the Evening News
According to the suit, the teen, identified only as JV, was riding an electric dirt bike near the National Mall on June 20 when officers stopped him. He was briefly handcuffed over the e-bike and released without charges. His stop had nothing to do with the Reflecting Pool.
The next day, a CBS Evening News segment had anchor Jericka Duncan reporting that five people had been arrested over damage to the pool. As she said it, viewers saw footage of JV in handcuffs. The broadcast showed him from behind, but the complaint says he was easy to recognize from his hair and the distinctive logo on the black hoodie he’s known for wearing.
The suit says the footage came from Freedom News TV, which had treated a detention for suspected vandalism and a separate dirt bike detention as two different events. CBS, it claims, ran them together.
The online version made things worse, according to the complaint. CBS posted an edited cut on its website and social accounts that showed JV’s face as he turned around, and those posts racked up at least 1.8 million views across Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.
Classmates and Teammates Recognized Him
The teen says classmates, friends, and hockey teammates recognized him, and that some of them pulled away after it aired. The complaint describes emotional distress and fears about what the episode could mean for his future.
“JV is not an animal, deranged vandal, or scum,” his attorneys wrote in the filing. “He is a normal 15-year-old high school student who was dragged into this horrific spotlight by the reckless reporting of CBS.”
CBS took the social posts down by around August 6, the complaint says. On August 16, Duncan read an on-air retraction: “We never should have published this story.”
Why the Retraction Didn’t End It
The CBS News lawsuit argues that correction came too late and did too little to undo the harm. It also says the coverage confused JV with David Hearn, the former Olympic canoeist who was named in the online version of the story and who was later indicted on a felony charge tied to the pool.
Hearn’s case has since fallen apart. Federal prosecutors dropped the vandalism charges against him. They also acknowledged that the damage blamed on him came from faulty construction, not vandalism, and a judge permanently dismissed the case on October 1. The pool had been renovated ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations.
JV’s family has asked for a jury trial, so if the case gets that far, jurors would decide what, if anything, CBS owes.
Does the CBS News lawsuit have a case, or should the on-air retraction have been enough? Sound off and let us know!
UP NEXT: Steven Soderbergh Steps In to Finish The Batman Part II as Matt Reeves Remains Sidelined
