More Bruno Drama: Sacha Baron Cohen Is Sued

USMagazine, Wednesday, June 3, 2009, 8:26am (PDT)

Let the law suits begin!

Sacha Baron Cohen -- who faced lots of legal action after duping aggrieved parties with his 2006 character Borat -- is being sued for allegedly attacking and leaving a woman "crippled" at a bingo hall in 2007 while playing his new flamboyantly gay Austrian character, Bruno.

In a suit obtained by TMZ.com, Richelle Olson, executive director of California's Desert Valley Charities, claims she was told Bruno was a celebrity who would appear and call numbers at the charity bingo game she ran for the elderly.

Bruno, she says in her legal papers, was an "extreme, outrageous, offensive caricature of a gay man dressed in sexually revealing clothing with an Austrian accent..."

She claims he used "vulgar and offensive language" and a "physical struggle ensued" when she tried taking the microphone from him. According to her suit, Cohen also "offensively touched, pushed and battered" her, causing her to fall to the ground.

Three cameramen then rushed the stage ... "where defendants attacked [her] for a period of one to five minutes to intentionally create a dramatic emotional response ... while [they] recorded her humiliation and embarrassment," the suit claims.

When the alleged assault ended, Olson went into another room where she was "sobbing uncontrollably" ... then was rendered unconscious ... "falling forward onto the thinly covered concrete slab, passing out and causing her to hit her head," according to the suit.

Olson says she also was rushed to the hospital with a "diagnosis of two brain bleeds" -- and has since been confined to a wheelchair and walker.

Cohen and NBC Universal are among the parties she is suing for unspecified damages.

A rep for Cohen and NBC Universal has yet to comment.

Earlier this week, Bruno made headlines by landing face-down in Eminem's lap, causing the rapper to curse and storm out of Sunday's MTV Movie Awards.

Turns out, the incident was staged, a show writer said Tuesday.

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