Glorida James
Photo by the Associated Press
Miami Heat star LeBron James' mother and a Fontainebleau parking valet have settled his lawsuit accusing her of slapping and slandering him.
"It was amicably settled and I can't comment on the details," Robert Stok, attorney for valet Rock Feller Sorel, said Thursday.
Gloria James' lawyers, Christopher Lyons of Lyons & Lurvey and Sandy Becher, declined to make any comment.
"It's nice to get it over with, and I'm sure it's in the best interests of all the parties," said Stok, of the Aventura firm Stok Folk + Kon.
A trial in the case was scheduled to begin Monday before Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Ellen Leesfield, who delayed a planned early retirement in part to hear the case.
James was in town for a Heat game in April 2011 and wound up at the LIV nightclub inside the Fontainebleau Miami Beach.
Sorel's lawsuit contended she "verbally harassed, threatened and slandered" him after he delivered her car "and without provocation, intentionally slapped him across the face with her right hand with such force, that in her inebriated state and due to the fact that she was wearing high heels, defendant James stumbled to the ground."
A security camera video showing the confrontation wound up on YouTube.
Before the physical contact, James leveled "a tirade of insults and racial epithets" at Sorel, who is Haitian, the complaint continued, listing six statements made "in the presence of numerous third parties."
Miami Beach police charged James with misdemeanor battery and misdemeanor disorderly intoxication.
She entered a deferred prosecution program last April and donated $1,000 to the Clinton Bush Haiti Relief Fund.
Steve Plunkett can be reached at s(305) 347-6648.
