TOM CRUISE files second lawsuit challenging gay rumors

<br>LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Tom Cruise has filed a $100 million defamation lawsuit against a man who allegedly offered to sell videotapes of himself having sex with the actor. <br><br>It's the second lawsuit

Tuesday, June 5th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ Tom Cruise has filed a $100 million defamation lawsuit against a man who allegedly offered to sell videotapes of himself having sex with the actor.

It's the second lawsuit Cruise has filed in the past month, challenging rumors that he is gay.

The Superior Court lawsuit filed Monday accuses Michael Davis of spreading a rumor by e-mail to the media, claiming he had an affair with Cruise and had a videotape to prove it.

The lawsuit accuses Davis of making the statements ``in order to hurt the plaintiff and to gain widespread publicity for himself.''

On May 29, the lawsuit says, Davis allegedly disseminated to at least a dozen media outlets in the United States ``false and defamatory written statements about the plaintiff, including the false assertion that Doe 1, an unnamed male, had engaged in an illicit homosexual relationship with the plaintiff during plaintiff's marriage and that this was recorded on videotape.''

Cruise's attorney, Bertram Fields, said Davis contacted the Globe, the Los Angeles Times, Fox News, KNBC-TV, CNN, Howard Stern, Playboy, Hustler, E! Entertainment Television and others.

Fields said no such videotape existed and that none of the media outlets reported the alleged rumor ``because they all know it is false.''

The lawsuit says all that's known of the defendant is that he lives in Los Angeles County, that Davis ``is not his true name'' and that his true name ``is unknown to the plaintiff.''

On May 2, Cruise filed an unrelated $100 million defamation lawsuit against porn actor Chad Slater, whose real name is Kyle Bradford, alleging Bradford told the French magazine Actustar about an ``alleged homosexual affair with Tom Cruise'' that Cruise's estranged wife, Nicole Kidman, discovered.

Cruise, 38, filed for divorce from Kidman in February after nearly a decade of marriage.