Keith Olbermann ‘arrogant,’ ‘immature,’ Current court filing says

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Al Gore’s Current TV is blasting back at fired host Keith Olbermann.

In a court filing Friday, the network attacked the liberal opinion-maker as ‘arrogant’ and ‘immature’ and said that he had failed to show up for nearly half of his recent workdays. The papers were a response to Olbermann’s $70-million breach-of-contract lawsuit filed Thursday against Current, which hired him as its star last year but dismissed him in late March after months of turmoil.

Current said it doesn’t have to ‘pay a dime’ to Olbermann, ‘who, having already been paid handsomely for showing up sporadically and utterly failing to keep his end of the bargain, now seeks to be paid tens of millions more for not working at all.’ The papers also point out that Olbermann told David Letterman, ‘I screwed up’ at Current during a TV appearance this week.

The network, founded by the former vice president with legal entrepreneur Joel Hyatt, accuses Olbermann of leaking his $10-million salary to the media to help justify his decision to join Current, which has roughly 68 million subscribers but very low ratings. In ‘utter disregard’ of his contract, the host rejected every idea to promote his program, the papers say, and even banned his staff at ‘Countdown’ from speaking with the executive vice president of communications.

‘[H]e arrogantly and falsely calls ‘cheap’ the company that has paid him the highest compensation he had ever received in his career, provided him the largest staff of any program he had ever anchored, given him the largest studio and custom-designed set on which he had ever worked, and paid over $50,000 in an eight-month period to eight different limousine companies because none of the previous seven were able to meet his patrician standards for how to drive him around New York City,’ the papers say.

[UPDATE, 3 p.m.: Patty Glaser, Olbermann’s attorney, said the Current filing ‘has no merit, presents no defense and is no problem for us.’]

What do you think of the Current-Olbermann legal battle?

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-- Scott Collins (twitter.com/scottcollinsLAT)