Names and faces

A celebrity photographer made a case to boost the potential damages he could win from Justin Bieber in a lawsuit that accuses the singer and a bodyguard of battery in a confrontation outside a recording studio. The photographer’s attorney, Mark DiCowden, said at a Tuesday hearing that he has documented at least 11 similar purported assaults against photographers over two years involving Bieber and his security personnel. DiCowden said a punitive-damages award for Jeffrey Binion could deter future assaults against celebrity photographers, known as paparazzi. “It’s not a financial fishing expedition,” DiCowden said in asking Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Sarah Zabel to allow him to pursue unspecified punitive damages. “It is well known around the world that Justin Bieber does not like to be photographed in public.” Zabel did not immediately rule. Bieber attorney Jared Lopez said there is no evidence that Binion was physically harmed in the purported attack in June - meaning compensatory damages for the photographer might be minimal - and no proof that Bieber told bodyguard Hugo Hesny to go after Binion.

A Saudi Arabian man injured in the Boston Marathon bombings last year has filed a defamation lawsuit against Glenn Beck, accusing the conservative commentator of calling him “the money man” behind the attack. Abdulrahman Alharbi, 20, said in the lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Boston that his reputation was “substantially and severely damaged” as a result of Beck’s statements on the air linking him to the bombings. The lawsuit,which also names the broadcast companies connected to Beck’s show, seeks a jury trial and unspecified damages. In the days after the explosions that killed three people and injured more than 260, Beck “repeatedly and falsely identified Mr. Alharbi as an active participant in the crimes that were committed on April 15, 2013, repeatedly questioned the motives of federal officials in failing to pursue or detain Alharbi and repeatedly and falsely accused Mr. Alharbi of being a criminal who had funded the attacks at the Boston Marathon,” the lawsuit alleges. Neither Beck nor his representatives immediately responded Tuesday to emails and telephone messages seeking comment.