Tom Cruise Lawsuit Against Tabloid Publisher Settled

Tom Cruise has settled a $50 million lawsuit against a tabloid publisher, ending a dispute over the magazine's suggestion that he "abandoned" his 6-year-old daughter Suri following his divorce from Katie Holmes.

After bringing his suit to court in October of last year, Cruise faced a high burden of proof to win the case: He had to prove "actual malice" on the part of the magazine and its parent company, Bauer Media Group.

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During the discovery process, the publisher, which also prints In Touch magazine, laid out the items it was seeking to use to defend itself should the dispute reach trial. According to The Hollywood Reporter, those items included detailed and potentially private information, such as Cruise's visitation schedule and communication with Suri, the terms of his divorce from Holmes, Suri's mental and emotional state following the divorce, the influence of Scientology on Cruise's visitation, as well as his history of litigation.

"Tom doesn't go around suing people. He's not a litigious guy," Cruise's lawyer Bert Fields said at the time the suit was filed, according to THR. Following the divorce, however, Cruise and his lawyers reportedly sent threatening letters to National Enquirer and Vanity Fair.

During Cruise's deposition, some of his remarks drew ire from the general public when he compared his training to Olympians' and said being a father away from his child was much like what soldiers in Afghanistan experience.

At the time of the settlement the terms remained undisclosed. Both sides will pay their own legal costs, however, and together they released a joint statement: "Bauer Publishing, as well as In Touch and Life & Style magazines, never intended to communicate that Tom Cruise had cut off all ties and abandoned his daughter, Suri, and regret if anyone drew that inference from anything they published."

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