UPDATE, MARCH 31, 12:13 P.M.: It's safe to say this: Benny Hinn's scandalous relationship with fellow evangelist Paula White–whether sexual or not–is certainly keeping lawyers busy.
The latest court maneuver involves Hinn dropping a lawsuit he filed after media consultant Phil Cooke tweeted in January that the Aliso Viejo-based televangelist and White were engaged.
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The Orlando Sentinel has the scoop.
The couple denies being engaged. After Hinn filed suit, Cooke posted this follow-up on Twitter:
My tweet last month that Benny Hinn was engaged was wrong–my source
was mistaken. I'm sorry and apologies to Benny Hinn and his children.
Hinn then dropped his lawsuit earlier this month.
As the post below explains, Hinn is being sued by a publisher in Florida seeking $250,000 because, the company claims, the televangelist admitted to an affair with White, thus violating his three-book deal's morality clause.
ORIGINAL POST, MARCH 30, 3:41 P.M.: Benny Hinn is being sued by his Florida book publisher, which claims the Aliso Viejo-based televangelist violated a morality clause in his contract when he began an “inappropriate relationship” with another evangelist, Paula White.
Lake Mary, Florida's Strang Communications Co., which is seeking $250,000, adds that Hinn 'fessed up to an affair with White.
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel has the scoop.
Three years ago, Hinn reportedly signed a three-book deal with Strang and was paid a $300,000 advance on his first tome, Blood In the Sand.
As the Weekly reported last July, Hinn denied he was having an affair with White, and he and the Florida-based preacher were caught by a National Inquirer photographer holding hands while strolling the streets of Rome, Italy.
But Strang maintains Hinn acknowledged “his inappropriate relationship” with White to the publisher in August and that the company should get its money back. The publisher also accuses Hinn of not living up to his deal to properly promote Blood In the Sand.
All of this apparently went down as Hinn's marriage was crumbling.
His wife, Suzanne Hinn, sued him for divorce last year. Her court filings at the time said he moved out of the family home and in with another man in Dana Point a couple of years before that.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.