OBJ atty: $15M suit extortion attempt

Amannamed Ishmael Temple is suing Odell Beckham Jr. for $15 million in a lawsuit that alleges Beckham oversaw Temple’s beatdown at a Los Angeles house party in January, per a TMZ report. A source told the Daily News on Friday night, however, that Temple’s lawsuit is a poorly executed extortion attempt of the star Giants wide receiver. And Beckham’s attorney told the Daily News that OBJ’s legal team is “fully prepared to vigorously defend against these outlandish and unsubstantiated claims.”

“This is getting old,” Beckham’s attorney, Daniel Davillier, told the News Friday night. “The filing is full of falsehoods and misinformation, and Mr. Beckham’s legal team is fully prepared to vigorously defend against these outlandish and unsubstantiated claims. Mr. Beckham denies any business or other relationship with plaintiff, and further denies any wrongdoing whatsoever.”

The lawsuit, according to the source, claims that Temple has known Beckham for more than half a decade since Beckham went “to UCLA.” Beckham, of course, attended LSU, not to mention he barely knows Temple at all, the source said, as his attorney also referenced. Moreover, while the TMZ report said Temple claims he was attacked “and woke up to kicks to his face and Beckham did not order security to stop,” the source tells a different story:

That Temple was drunk and belligerent at the party, and that Temple had attacked a chef working the party with a bottle of Hennessy after the chef had asked him not to drink from the bottle. Temple, who’d been asked already by security to leave, ignored the chef’s request and attacked him with the bottle, per the source, and the chef pushed Temple off of him. At that point, security forced Temple to leave.

Beckham, meanwhile, was not even in the room or aware of what was happening, per the source. Furthermore, while the TMZ report claims Temple was invited to Beckham’s house, the Los Angeles area house didn’t even belong to Beckham; nor is it the offseason home Beckham is staying in now.

Temple, the source said, asked Beckham for money first and said if OBJ didn’t pay him then he would file a lawsuit. The source said Temple didn’t file a police or incident report that night or go to a hospital that night and only saw a doctor days later. Temple claims in the TMZ report that he was punched in the back of the head, stomped on and had to spend $18K just to fix his teeth while sustaining other injuries.

Beckham’s legal team, though, clearly is tired of the Giants and Nike star being a target of misinformation.

“Ishmael Temple has expressly acknowledged in his own lawsuit that Odell Beckham, Jr. never once touched him; and yet, Mr. Beckham is being sued for an alleged altercation that definitively did not involve him at all,” Beckham’s attorney told the News. “In January, 2018, Mr. Temple arrived drunk and belligerent at a third-party, private residence at which Mr. Beckham was also present, among others. Mr. Temple made threatening remarks to several attendees, at which point he was repeatedly asked to leave. When he refused, and aggressively threatened yet another attendee, he was involved in a fight with that person. The situation was diffused, and Mr. Temple was escorted off the premises.

“Even though Mr. Temple agrees that Mr. Beckham was in no way involved in the physical altercation, neither as a participant nor as an instigator, he nevertheless demanded money from Mr. Beckham, and has now filed a meritless suit against him,” the lawyer added. “(We) are confident that Mr. Beckham has no legal liability to Mr. Temple, and (we) have no intention of giving in to what amounts to a shakedown attempt. This guy claims somebody assaulted him to near death, but there’s no police report, no hospital record, no evidence of an actual injury, and he asserts that Odell is responsible. This is clearly a frivolous lawsuit. We’ll see him in court.”

GIANTS WOO JOSH, TOO

Sam Darnold is not the only quarterback the Giants are wining and dining.

UCLA quarterback Josh Rosen said on the Rich Eisen Show Friday that he met with Giants co-owners Steve Tisch and John Mara the night before his private workout with the team earlier this week. “It was awesome,” he said. Rosen had private workouts with the Giants, Jets, Browns and Bills thus far.

The UCLA quarterback is expected to be among the top picks in the draft, but the Giants have been coy about what their plans are going to be with the No. 2 pick. The Giants are certainly doing their due diligence on quarterbacks. Head coach Pat Shurmur and offensive coordinator Mike Shula watched Darnold throw at his Pro Day on Wednesday and were in attendance for Wyoming QB Josh Allen’s Pro Day on Friday.

END SUSPENDED

Josh Mauro, the defensive end who was signed by the Giants on Monday, has been suspended for the first four games of the 2018 season for violating the NFL policy on performance enhancing substances, the team announced Friday.