See Also: Teri Hatcher (Susan Mayer) People Guide

Teri Hatcher (Susan Mayer) accepted "very substantial" libel damages today from Daily Sport, over its untrue report that alleged Hatcher had sex in a van in her garden while her daughter remained alone in their home.

"I consider myself lucky to have experienced a resurgence in my career with my role in Desperate Housewives," Hatcher said in a statement, according to Times Online. "It is in light of that gratefulness I have tolerated many ridiculous and fabricated lies and gossip in the tabloids. Like many celebrities, I have embraced that some of the nonsense that tabloids write just comes with the territory of fame."

Hatcher said normally she would ignore such articles, but the fact that her daughter was brought into the story was a step too far. "Anyone who has ever entered a legal proceeding knows that when you are totally in the right, it still takes a lot of energy to move forward this kind of proceeding," she said. "This is probably why more celebrities do not fight back against every made-up story—from who they date, to where they shop, and what they eat. But when a story appeared about me, insinuating that I am an irresponsible and neglectful parent, I had to draw the line. I will never allow any tabloid to so egregiously attack the area of my life which I give top priority, and that is my parenting."

During the hearing, Hatcher's solicitor-advocate, Simon Smith, told the High Court judge that Hatcher does own a VW van, but that was the only truth to the article. "The grossly defamatory allegations are entirely false, deeply offensive and utterly without foundation. The truth is that the claimant is a proud single mother to her seven-year-old daughter and naturally finds extremely insulting the lurid suggestion that she neglects her daughter in order to have regular sex with a series of men in a van parked outside her home. Such allegations are without any substance at all. Although the claimant does have such a VW van, which she keeps for nostalgic reasons, and which she occasionally uses to take her daughter on family trips and holidays, that is where the similarity ends."

In addition to the damages, Smith said that the paper would issue a full apology. "As a mark of its regret, the defendant has since agreed to publish a prominent front-page apology and to enter into this statement to unequivocally apologize for the deep distress and acute embarrassment caused by its allegations, which it acknowledges were completely false. The defendant has also agreed to pay very substantial damages to the claimant for the libel and to reimburse the claimant's legal costs in full. Finally, the defendant has undertaken not to repeat the libel ever again."

According to WENN (via IMDb Pro), the National Enquirer also ran the story and has now apologized. "We believe that the purported 'world exclusive' interview by Patricia Nolan was fabricated and the story was false. Therefore, we withdraw and retract the statements in that article," it said in a statement.

The news comes as a belated birthday present for Hatcher, who turned 41 last week. She had a party on set the day after her birthday according to contactmusic.com, but wasn't allowed any birthday candles. "About eight o'clock in the morning they brought out a cake and everybody sang Happy Birthday," Hatcher recalled. "Then somebody said, 'Well, blow out the candles,' and I said, 'But there aren't any,' 'cause the fire marshal wasn't there and you can't light a fire on the set without a fire marshal. And it was eight o clock in the morning, which is really too early to be eating cake. But it was the gesture and it was great."

The full article on Hatcher's legal case can be found at The Times. The article on Hatcher's birthday is at contactmusic.com.

Discuss this news item at Talk Desperate!
 Add Get Desperate! RSS feed to your news reader or My Yahoo!
Also a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fan? Then visit CSIFiles.com!