Troubled Hollywood actress Lindsay Lohan and her mother are suing Fox News and journalist Michelle Fields for allegedly defaming them by saying they used cocaine together, but many legal experts snort at their case.

The Lohans say in a 14-page complaint filed Monday in New York that Fields crossed the line when she said on Feb. 4, 2014, “Lindsay Lohan's mom is doing cocaine with her.” They say that’s untrue and that they deserve damages for slander, defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Fields made the remark on host Sean Hannity’s show as she chastised parents of young celebrities for abetting their misbehavior. Sixteen days later, a Fox presenter apologized on-air for airing a comment "that we cannot verify."

Fox News says video of Fields’ remark was taken off the network's website before the on-air apology, but the Lohan lawsuit claims the company “failed to remove the segment” from its website.

Lohan, a renowned wild child who has spent time in jail and rehab, told Oprah Winfrey six months before the Fox segment that she used cocaine about 10-15 times. In 2012, she claimed in a leaked conversation her mother, Dina Lohan, was using cocaine, though she later recanted.

It's unclear if Lohan ever said she used the drug with her mother, or if any proof exists that they did – an important issue because truth is an absolute defense in slander cases. But that may not be the most significant fact in the case.

“As a public figure, Lindsay Lohan would have to prove they acted with actual malice and reckless disregard of the truth,” says Cornell University Law School professor Jeffrey Rachlinski. “That is a very difficult standard to prove, making it unlikely the case would succeed.”

Rachlinski and most other experts contacted for this story believe Lohan’s mother qualifies as a public figure, making her claim of defamation also dependent on a standard far higher than would apply to a less well-known person.

“The Lohans have a very difficult uphill climb on this – not impossible, but very difficult,” says Joel Kaplan, a professor at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, who agrees Dina Lohan would be considered a public person.

“[Fields] could say, 'I recall that I read somewhere that Lindsay admitted to using cocaine and I made the wrong assumption that she was doing it with her mother,'” Kaplan says.

“The legal standard says not only did she have to wrongfully accuse them of something they didn’t do, she would have to know it was false when she said it,” he says. “And why would she say something she knew was wrong? They basically have to prove she had a motive to go there and defame them: that there’s something that happened between them, that they slighted her or didn’t give her an interview or whatever.”

In the unlikely event the Lohans can prove malice, Kaplan adds, “what kind of damages is [Lindsay Lohan] going to get when she’s been in newspapers, on TV and in magazines being arrested multiple times for illegal activities?”

Pace University School of Law professor Leslie Garfield says Dina Lohan is, without doubt, a "limited purpose public figure," meaning a public person in the context of her relationship with her daughter, under New York law.

“Dina Lohan is the perfect example of someone who has taken affirmative steps to attract public attention,” she says. “Her whole thing is about being her mother and partying with hershe’s put herself in the public on that.”

Garfield doubts the lawsuit will make it to trial. Fox News will file a response, likely with a motion to dismiss, she says, and a judge will then decide if a reasonable juror could find the suit meritorious.

“I think that’s not going to happen,” she says.

“I think it’s going to be difficult for the Lohans to prove actual malice, and for that reason the Lohans’ basic case will fail,” she says of the defamation claim. And she brushes aside the claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

“It’s got to cause severe emotional distress. They waited a year from when it was stated,” she says. “Basically, I would say to prove emotional distress they would have to show Lindsay Lohan and/or her mother were taken to bed for months.”

Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz says he, unlike many experts, does not believe that Dina Lohan counts as a public figure, making the mother’s case more likely to succeed. Lindsay Lohan’s claims, however, are likely to fail because she has publicly admitted using cocaine, he says.

"The defamation against the mother would be that she did it with her daughter,” Dershowitz says. The outcome of Dina Lohan's claim “depends on whether or not they snorted together and whether there is any evidence they did,” he says, though the burden of proof at trial would be on Lohan, who would have to prove the claim’s probably untrue.

University of California at Los Angeles School of Law professor Eugene Volokh, who runs the Washington Post’s popular Volokh Conspiracy legal blog, takes the stance that Dina Lohan probably is either a general purpose public figure or a limited purpose public figure and sees a difficult path for the Lohans.

“If Fields sincerely – even unreasonably – believed that Lindsay Lohan’s cocaine use was recent, that Dina Lohan had used cocaine (as Lindsay had alleged; maybe Fields hadn’t heard the denials), and that the two had used cocaine together (perhaps because Fields sincerely ran Lindsay’s admitted use and Dina’s alleged use together in her mind, and recalled it as their using cocaine together), then there’d be no liability,” Volokh says in an email.

He points out that if the case does go to trial, however, it’s possible a jury would decide Fields invented the story.

Volokh points out that though the date the video came off Fox News’s website is in dispute, if it was left up after the network determined the claim likely was wrong, the network could be on the hook for “defamation as to the continued distribution of the material from that point on,” even if all parties are innocent of defamation for the on-air comment itself.

Fox News would not comment beyond its initial statement promising to fight the lawsuit. Fields did not respond to a request for comment.

Read the lawsuit:

