Scholtz Loses Lawsuit

Boston mainman Tom’s lawsuit against ex wife of late singer Brad thrown out


Boston guitarist Tom Scholz has had his defamation lawsuit against the former wife of late singer Brad Delp thrown out by the highest court in Massachusetts.


Scholz sued the Boston Herald and Micki Delp after the newspaper printed articles in which she made remarks which Scholz claimed could be construed as blaming him for Delp’s suicide in 2007.

A judge dismissed the lawsuit against the singer’s ex in 2011 but it was reinstated by the Massachusetts Appeals Court. A different judge dismissed Scholz's lawsuit against the paper.

In articles printed by the Boston Herald, Delp said her former husband had been upset over bad feelings from the band’s breakup more than 20 years previously, and that he felt caught between Scholz and the rest of the group.

The Supreme Judicial Court found that Delp's statements were her opinions, so they couldn’t form the basis of a claim of defamation.

According to WCVB, the court report says: “The statements at issue could not have been understood by a reasonable reader to have been anything but opinions regarding the reason Brad committed suicide.”

A statement from Scholz’s publicist reads: “Mr Scholz believes this decision will have adverse consequences well beyond his case against the Herald because it regrettably means that people are largely free to accuse another of causing someone's suicide, even when, as here, the accusation is false.

“In the end, Mr Scholz remains saddened by the loss of his friend and bandmate, Brad Delp.”

Delp died in March 2007 when he deliberately killed himself by carbon monoxide poisoning.

One would hope this is the end of Tom tilting at windmills and get back to making better music. We can only hope.

In the end, Brad was sick, but even with that it's hard to believe anything from 20+ years earlier would have had that much effect. Unless there was a lot of pulling from both "sides" for Brad to work with them.

Ar-Pharazon said:

it's hard to believe anything from 20+ years earlier would have had that much effect.

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you'd be surprised just how many years a person can carry around the baggage of a major tragedy in their lives.

Sounds like a personal issue. I wouldn't know what did or didn't happen. I think he's an asshole for carrying on Boston without Brad, but that doesn't mean I'll hold him responsible for this case. Suing the woman seems like overkill but maybe he was just that deeply hurt by the comments, I don't know. If he was really worried about the slander itself, well suing her over it just means that people keep hearing about it in the headlines. I literally wouldn't have remembered this even happened, until I saw this thread and the new headline.