Sunda Croonquist, veteran comedienne is being sued by her mother-in-law after making her the punchline of too many jokes, according to a lawsuit filed in April in U.S. District Court in New Jersey. The lawsuit, filed by mother-in-law Ruth Zafrin, her daughter, Shelley Edelman, and Shelley’s husband, Neil, seeks unspecified damages and demands that she remove any offensive statements from her Web site, routines and recordings.
Zafrin is accusing the half-black, half-Swedish, Roman Catholic comedian who married into a Jewish family of spreading false, defamatory and racist lies with in-law jokes that have become a natural routine for her live shows and appearances on Comedy Central.
According to Associated Press, Croonquist said there was a time when her in-laws would laugh with everyone else at the black-member-of-a-Jewish-family jokes. “They played my tape at Passover one year, and they loved it!” she said. But promotion for upcoming gigs in New Jersey featured information on her Web site that, according to her in-laws, allowed pretty much anyone to figure out the identities of her in-laws.
Here’s a video of Croonquist on Comics Unleashed: