ADL will continue to fight $9.7 million jury award
by ANDREA JACOBS, Intermountain Jewish News
Follow j. on | and |
DENVER -- With a $10 million guillotine threatening to fall, the
Anti-Defamation League will continue fighting a legal battle that began
at a press conference here nine years ago.
A federal appeals court in Denver ruled April 22 to uphold a $9.75
million jury award against the ADL and Saul Rosenthal, then Mountain
States regional director, for publicly calling an Evergreen, Colo.,
couple dangerous anti-Semites in 1994.
William and Dee Quigley, who filed a federal lawsuit against the ADL and
Rosenthal in 1995, received a $10.5 million jury award in April, 2000.
The ADL, whose annual national budget is $45 million, appealed the
verdict the following month.
In April, 2001, U.S. District Court Judge Edward Nottingham reduced the
award to $9.75 million. The relatively small reduction appeared to
support the jury's conclusion that the ADL had "acted recklessly in its
efforts to publicize what it perceived to be anti-Semitic conduct."
The most recent decision on April 22 was handed down by a three judge
panel from U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, with one judge
dissenting.
Judge Harris Hartz of New Mexico wrote in his dissenting opinion that he
would have dismissed the defamation complaint and remanded the case for
a new trial.
The ADL is now filing a petition for a rehearing en banc, meaning it
will be reviewed by all active judges on the U.S. 10th Circuit Court.
Only if one of the judges calls for a vote on the petition will the
judges decide whether the full court will hear the case.
The first hurdle faced by the ADL is getting a majority of active judges
to agree to hear the case.
"We have a lot of confidence in the appellate judges and the court," ADL
corporate counsel Jill Kahn Meltzer told the Intermountain Jewish News.
"We will try to convince them that the dissenting opinion was correct."
In 1994, the regional ADL office held a press conference in support of
Mitchell and Candace Aronson, a Jewish couple who alleged the Quigleys
were conducting a vicious anti-Semitic campaign to force them from their
Evergreen neighborhood.
The Aronsons had secretly taped cordless phone conversations made by the
Quigleys, who talked about putting fake oven doors on the Aronson home,
a reference to the Holocaust; dousing their children in gasoline; and
burning crosses on the Aronsons' lawn.
At the press conference, Rosenthal denounced the Quigleys' conversations
"as the worst case of anti-Semitism in Denver" since the murder of
talk-show host Alan Berg in 1984.
The Quigleys, who maintained they made those and similar remarks in jest
and never intended them to be taken seriously, sued the ADL and
Rosenthal in 1995 for defamation, violations of federal wire tap law and
invasion of privacy.
The federal panel threw out the invasion of privacy claims on April 22
but let the defamation and federal wire tap claims -- and the monetary
award -- stand.
Rosenthal, who left the ADL to pursue other career opportunities in
October, 2001, after 18 years at the helm of the local office, told the
IJN he was unable to comment because the attorneys were handling all
media responses.
Mountain States area director Bruce DeBoskey, who inherited the
situation when he became regional head in February, 2002, spoke to the
IJN from the ADL's national leadership conference in Washington, D.C.
"We're obviously disappointed but we are heartened by the dissenting
judge and his arguments," DeBoskey said.
Comments
Be the first to comment!
Leave a Comment
In order to post a comment, you must first log in.
Are you looking for user registration? Or
have you forgot
your password?