A legal kerfuffle that began in North Carolina between a pair of feuding reality TV personalities has spilled across the border into South Carolina.
Joseph Teti, one-time star of “Dual Survival” on the Discovery Channel, drew first blood in 2014, when he filed suit in Mecklenburg County against his rival survival TV star and former Army National Guard Special Forces commander, Mykel Hawke, ex-co-host of Discovery’s “Man, Woman, Wild.”
Hawke
The complaint alleges defamation by way of much online trash talking.
Teti essentially accuses Hawke, whose show ended after two seasons, of being jealous of his success and trying to wreck his career. His suit states that Hawke falsely accused Teti of lying about his military service record while also saying that Teti “would resort to arson, planting bombs in residences, [and] harming women, children and animals.”
Hawke struck back in August, filing a defamation suit against Teti in U.S. District Court in Greenville, South Carolina. The suit, which has received little, if any, media attention, states that Discovery hired Teti in 2012, shortly after Hawke “separated from his employment” with the network in December 2011.
The complaint alleges that Teti posted defamatory statements about Hawke on Teti’s personal Facebook page and Discovery’s page in 2014, and that the network failed to take action.
According to the suit, Teti wrote that “three clinical psychologists have diagnosed Mykel Hawke as having Narcissistic Personality Disorder” and that the Army had revoked Hawke’s Special Forces qualification, and made “other similar type statements all of which were untrue.”
Hawke argues that “each time that someone clicked on said statements [on Facebook] it renewed the slander and was a brand new incident. … Due to the slander being renewed by the clicks on said website it created thousands of incidents.”
Teti
Teti also allegedly contacted Hawke’s sponsors and requested that they sever ties with the survival star.
The complaint names Discovery and Teti, but a judge dismissed Teti, a North Carolina resident, as a defendant in November for lack of personal jurisdiction.
An attorney for Discovery, Edward Fenno of an eponymous firm in Charleston, declined to discuss the ongoing case. Hawke’s attorneys at the Wigger Law Firm in North Charleston could not be reached for comment.
Hawke now co-stars with his wife in a new series on the Travel Channel called “Lost Survivors.” The two are “dropped in an undisclosed location, where they are forced to use their survival expertise and skills to identify where they are and get back to civilization.”
The new season of “Dual Survival” aired Jan. 13, but Teti did not appear on the show. He was replaced by another military veteran.