Sharpton given 10-day ultimatum by lawyers of Nolan Wells' friends over defamation claims

The attorneys for Nolan Wells’ three friends who were accompanying him before he vanished have given a 10-day ultimatum to Rev. Al Sharpton.

Sharpton rejected the threats of a defamation lawsuit from lawyers representing three friends of Nolan Xavier Wells.

Wells, 18, then was found dead near Horn Island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast on July 6 after he reached there by boat with a group of friends on the Fourth of July.

Sharpton’s attorneys released a statement on Tuesday, September 1, and rejected the claims in the threatened lawsuit as “meritless,” and said he will “neither be silenced nor retract statements he did not make".

The attorney’s representing Nolan Wells' three friends, Warren Hudson, Iax Pitalo and Morgan Seymour, are Mississippi-based high-profile lawyers who practise defamation and media law.

For context, these three friends accompanied Nolan Wells on a Fourth of July trip to Horn Island.

In a letter addressed to Sharpton’s attorneys, Cox and Paltzik alleged Sharpton defamed the three men during a July 14 interview with TMZ and in remarks that followed Wells’ death.

Amid the ongoing legal feud between the attorneys of both sides, Wells’ autopsy was completed in July, though the state coroner's office has not released the report, which is under consideration by the grand jury.

Nolan Wells, a football star at Southwest Mississippi Community College, went on a boat trip to Horn Island, which is just 10 miles away from the coast of Mississippi, but vanished and later his body was discovered on July 6, 2026.