This Los Angeles-based lawyer represents some A-list celebrities, and his tactics and letters are widely feared.

“You call Marty because you need someone like Mike Tyson in the Holyfield fight, when he bit his ear off,” actress Sharon Stone said, according to the Hollywood Reporter in 2012. “Marty is such a badass motherfucker.”

But late last year, a California appeals court ruled that former model Janice Dickinson—who said she was raped by actor-comedian Bill Cosby—could sue Singer for defamation. The court’s decision was over a news release from Singer saying that Dickinson lied and more of the same in what the court called “hollow threats” to other news outlets interested in the story.

In Dickinson v. Cosby, the court pointed out that Singer never sued any media outlet for running the story and the “demand letter was a bluff intended to frighten media outlets into silence (at a time when they could still be silenced), but with no intention to go through with the threat of litigation if they were uncowed.”

Check out our feature, “Shut Up! The Art of Cease-and-Desist Letters,” in the July 2018 issue of the ABA Journal.