On December 20, 2023,  Michele Evans filed a Civil - Personal Injury and Torts lawsuit against Shannon Sharpe, now she's suing for defamation.

Michele Evans filed the complaint, claiming words put into the public record in Sharpe’s defense last year left her mentally broken and cut off from the world. She’s filing for defamation per se, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of emotional distress, with punitive damages on the table alongside compensatory ones.

Last year, Evans filed a civil suit against Sharpe, claiming they were romantically involved in the early 2000s, when she was a reporter for ESPN, and he was a standout for the Broncos.

According to Evans, their relationship went off the rails after Sharpe supposedly became abusive and possessive and eventually, allegedly, raped her.

Evans’s new lawsuit, filed on April 24, 2026, targets a statement in which Sharpe’s side denied her claims and declared she was “still on probation after serving 3 years in prison for trying to kill her husband so that she could hopefully pursue a relationship with Shannon.”

Evans says that the claim is completely false and that she never attempted to harm her husband under any circumstances.

“[Shannon Sharpe’s] statements are false. [I] did not attempt to kill [my] husband and did not engage in the conduct alleged by [Sharpe]. [Sharpe] knew these statements were false at the time they were made, or acted with reckless disregard for their truth or falsity. [Sharpe] failed to conduct any reasonable investigation before making such serious accusations,” Evans said in her complaint.

The damage Evans describes in her complaint is extensive, covering PTSD, severe anxiety, panic attacks, depression and agoraphobia.

“[I] required and continue to require ongoing psychological treatment, including weekly therapy. [I] further suffered damage to [my] reputation, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, and social withdrawal,” Evans said.

She also alleges that Sharpe’s already damaging statement got twisted further across social media into something even worse, with people spreading versions claiming she had actually killed her husband rather than just attempted to.

Evans has been fighting Shannon Sharpe in court since 2023, when she filed her first defamation case against him for $4 million, and she later added a second suit under the New York City Gender-Motivated Violence Act over an alleged sexual assault she says took place in 2010, as AllHipHop previously reported.

This new filing drops after Sharpe navigated serious legal and financial fallout tied to different allegations.

He settled a $50 million lawsuit brought by Gabriella Zuniga in July 2025, with reports the payout at roughly $20 million, and ESPN cut ties with him days after that deal was confirmed.