Vale's studio audience on Thursday, photographed at the moment the lawsuit says they 'went quiet.'Photo: Vale Tonight / PBTV
Late-night host Donny Vale filed suit on Monday against the 200 members of his studio audience from Thursday's taping of "Vale Tonight," alleging they "withheld laughter" during a monologue he describes in the filing as "objectively strong."
The suit, lodged at Palmetto Bay civil court, names each audience member by seat number and seeks "one laugh, delivered sincerely, at a time of the plaintiff's choosing." It also asks the court to declare the monologue "funny as a matter of law."
The monologue
Thursday's monologue covered the mayor's yacht, the pelican and a bit about bus line 9 that Vale's writers say "killed in the room, the writers' room, which is also a room." The studio audience, according to the show's own laugh meter, responded at "polite" for eleven minutes and "silent" for the bus line 9 bit.
Vale's attorney argues that audience members accepted free tickets "with the understanding that they would participate," and that silence "is not participation, it's an opinion."
"I've been doing this nineteen years. I know a good bit. The bus took the scenic route only. That's the joke. It's right there."
— Donny Vale, in a statement read to Wazel News over the phone, twice
The filing. Exhibit A is a laugh track; Exhibit B is the absence of one.
The audience responds
Seat 14C, reached through the show's ticket office, told Wazel News he had laughed "a normal amount" and that the bus line 9 bit "wasn't a joke, that's just what happened, I take that bus."
A group of defendants has retained a lawyer and intends to countersue for "the yacht bit, which we'd heard." The lawyer said her clients "came for a show and got a deposition."
Legal experts weigh in
A professor of entertainment law at Palmetto Bay University said the case is "the first of its kind, and will probably be the last," as the court "cannot compel a laugh, only a sound." She noted that if the court orders the audience to laugh, "it will be on the record, and the record will be very sad."
"Vale Tonight" airs Thursday as scheduled. The network says the audience "will be seated as usual" and "has been briefed."