Lawsuit threat has Oz publishers shying away from new Cruise biography

Melbourne, Jan 16 : The threat of a hefty lawsuit has several bookstores and publishers in Australia shying away from Andrew Morton's biography of Tom Cruise.

Publishers like Pan Macmillan Australia have decided against publishing the tome, while retailers like Dymocks have announced they will not be keeping it in their shelves following the advice of their lawyers, reports news.com.au.

In the book, Tom Cruise: An Unauthorised Biography, Morton claims that Cruise and now wife Katie Holmes' daughter Suri was conceived by sperm from dead Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Morton, who rose to fame with a biography on Princess Diana titled 'Diana: Her True Story', has based the book on interviews with high-ranking Scientologists, or Sea Orgs, as they are known.

In it, he says that Cruise is second-in-command at the controversial Church of Scientology.

Morton also claims that Cruise's ex wife Nicole Kidman was warned by Scientologists not to reveal details of her marriage to the actor as it would mean losing contact to their kids - Isabel and Connor.

Cruise's legal team has already branded the tome 'nutty' and full of 'tired old lies'. The actor has also instructed his legal eagles to slap a whopping 50million pounds lawsuit on the publishers St Martin's Press when the tome goes on sale in the US on January 15.

Freedom-of-information advocate Irene Moss said that the decision to keep away from the biography reflect plaintiff-friendly defamation laws in Australia, where even the suggestion of a lawsuit is enough make publishers and booksellers change their minds about a certain book.

ANI