Oprah Winfrey to stand trial in defamation case

[HMG] – When Oprah Winfrey founded her Leadership Academy in South Africa back in 2007 she probably dreamed it would bring forward a new generation of women like her. Instead it’s just brought her a lawsuit.

Home to 300 girls, all chosen by Winfrey herself, the free school opened in Johannesburg in January of 2007. But the problems soon started. In the fall of that year a Dorm Matron was accused of sexually assaulting six of the students.

On November 12, Winfrey — who had donated $40-million to the project — flew to Johannesburg with private detectives to resolve the situation and promptly fired all the Dorm heads, along with the Academy’s Headmistress, Nomvuyo Mzamane.

And it’s Mzamane who has now brought the suit.

Here’s the beef: While in South Africa Winfrey met with the parents to reassure them, then held a press conference to tell her fans and the world that things were in hand. Issued at the time, Mzamane’s lawsuit alleges the chat show host made comments at those meetings that both insulted and defamed her.

She also says she’s been unable to find similar work since being dismissed.

The two sides’ lawyers have been playing ping-pong with the suit ever since, and Oprah’s legal guys even petitioned to get it dismissed back in 2008. But yesterday Judge Eduardo C. Robreno ruled that the former headmistress has enough of a case to go to a jury.

And this is not her first lawsuit — The Times says Mzamane also sued the Huffington Post in 2008 for claiming she’d been charged with a crime. She settled that case out of court, and Arianna Huffington and her vanity paper later apologized in print.

Her lawsuit against Oprah, meanwhile, is now scheduled for trial on March 29th in Philadelphia’s District Court.

Let’s see if the chat-show diva can talk her way out of this…