O’Neal Getting Sued for Mocking Disabled Man on Instagram

Shaquille O’Neal, the iconic NBA player, may need to bring his love of teasing others down a notch or two, after a miserable picture he tweeted of himself mocking a disabled man.  Shaq mocked 23 year old  Jahmel Binion’s selfie on Instagram and managed to ‘earn’ himself 14,000 likes by followers, including a number of other NBA stars.

But Binion, a sufferer of hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia, was less than impressed, and even a personal phone call from his (former) idol would not help the hurt he felt.  Now Binion has decided to take O’Neal to the courts and slammed the NBA star with a lawsuit in Michigan’s Macomb County.  Binion claims that the mocking selfie “constituted a public disclosure of embarrassing private facts” about him and placed him in “a false light in the public eye.”

“I was kinda hurt because I look up to him and I watch Shaq play basketball so I was like, why is he making fun of me when he’s supposed to be this role model?” Binion said in an interview.

The National Foundation for Ectodermal Dysplasias took things one step further by penning an open letter to O’Neal, saying that “bullying is never acceptable.”

O’Neal seemed to think that a personal apology was enough to get him off the hook, and even boasted about calling Binion to do so.

His first tweet read: “Made a new friend today when I called and apologized to Jahmel Binion. Great dude”, and was followed up by “Had the opportunity to talk to Jahmel Binion yesterday and apologize about the post on IG!”

Hypohidrotic ectodermal dysplasia is a disorder which causes a number of external deformities, including sparse hair growth and missing teeth.

Binion has used managed to leverage the (albeit unwanted) publicity he received by launching an anti-bullying campaign on Facebook.