Mario Lopez Was Served in a Viral TikTok, but What Is He Being Sued For?

Whenever a video goes viral on TikTok, you often find yourself with just as many questions as answers. In a recent video that's trending all over social media, viewers can see Mario Lopez being served with a lawsuit. Although the video is relatively short, we see Mario walking away from the camera along with a visual of his house.

Although the lawsuit suggests that Mario is none-too-happy about the lawsuit, it doesn't offer much information about what the suit is actually over. Here's what we know.

Apparently, Mario is getting served in connection with a defamation lawsuit filed by Desiree Townsend over various things that Mario said about her on social media. Desiree has filed a $10 million lawsuit over a single Instagram post in which she alleges that Mario defamed her. The post in question was a clip from a news broadcast in which Mario added the commentary "There’s gotta be some kind of award for this performance … #MethodActor #OscarWorthy."

The comment was written in response to a news clip in which a reporter explained that Desiree had a rare neurological disorder called dystonia in response to a flu vaccination. The news clip then shows that, when she wasn't being interviewed, Desiree was behaving quite normally. Her symptoms, which were quite severe during an interview, seemed to go away completely, suggesting that she might have been faking the whole thing.

Mario is being sued for suggesting that she was putting on a performance, and that lawsuit is currently pending in court. The lawsuit further claims that Mario only posted the video on social media to boost engagement after an endorsement for Mott's apple sauce failed to generate his usual level of engagement. While the video does seem a bit random, it's hard to see how Mario's statement is defamatory, and certainly not worth $10 million.

Although she was pilloried back in 2009 after it seemed that she faked her symptoms, she has continued to insist that her symptoms were real, although she is now far less sure that her flu vaccine had anything to do with them. In 2023, she spoke to NBC News and said that the anti-vaccine movement used her to further their own narrative.

She became widely known as the "vaccine cheerleader" at the time, and said that in the decade since her story went viral, she has been able to better manage her symptoms through diet and exercise.

What's less clear, though, is why it would be so important to her to sue Mario Lopez, who simply resurfaced an old video of her and offered a fairly mild rebuke of his own.

There are plenty of people who don't like Mario Lopez, but even they are not sure exactly what this lawsuit is supposed to be for. If badmouthing someone in a fairly light way online is lawsuit-worthy, there's about to be a lot more defamation lawsuits.