Laravel 3 Validation of a single input form

I am using spectacular Laravel Framework but i have a validation issue that i cannot solve in any way trying to validate a single email field.

My form input is:

{{ Form::email('email', Input::old('email'), array('id' => 'email', 'class' => 'span4', 'placeholder' => Lang::line('newsletter.email')->get($lang), 'novalidate' => 'novalidate')) }}

My controller

public function post_newsletter() {

    $email = Input::get('email');

    $v = Newsletter::validator($email, Newsletter::$rules);

    if($v !== true)
    { ... }
    else 
    { ... }
}

and my model

class Newsletter extends Eloquent {

/**
 * Newsletter validation rules
 */
public static $rules = array(
    'email' => 'required|email|unique:newsletters'
);

/**
 * Input validation
 */
public static function validator($attributes, $rules) {
    $v = Validator::make($attributes, $rules);

    return $v->fails() ? $v : true;
}
}

I ve done this so many times with success with much complicated forms but now even if i enter a valid email i get an error message about required fied etc Am I missing something? Maybe is the fact that i try to validate just one single field? I really don't get it why this happens.