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Condit's reputation on trial

 
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laskipper



Joined: 17 Sep 2002
Posts: 1232
Location: Northern Ohio

PostPosted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 2:26 pm    Post subject: Condit's reputation on trial Reply with quote

http://www.modbee.com/

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Condit's reputation on trial
Former congressman scrutinized in his libel suit against author Dunne


By MICHAEL DOYLE
BEE WASHINGTON BUREAU
Last Updated: February 20, 2005, 04:30:35 AM PST

WASHINGTON — Then-congressman Gary Condit's reputation was on the line in late 2001 when his re-election campaign commissioned a survey.

Now his reputation is again on the line, though he no longer holds office. As he pursues a defamation lawsuit against author Dominick Dunne, the $11 million question is when did Condit's stature sour.

Condit claims Dunne's comments cost him dearly, up to and including the March 2002 Democratic primary election when Condit lost his job.

Dunne's attorneys retort that Condit's actions undermined his public standing.

This dispute over who's responsible for a reputation illustrates important lessons in libel. It revisits legal territory previously inhabited by characters such as Elizabeth Taylor's former boyfriend and a dancer named Tiger Lil.

Most immediately, the dispute over Condit's reputation could shape not just who prevails in this case, but how much money Dunne might owe if he loses. Consequently, Dunne's attorneys are vigorously tracking Condit's public standing in the wake of Chandra Levy's disappearance.

"Now, prior to and during your (2002) campaign, did you conduct any polls?" Dunne attorney Paul LiCalsi asked Condit during a deposition last September.

"No," Condit replied.

"No?" LiCalsi persisted.

"I don't do polls," Condit explained, according to a transcript of the deposition.

LiCalsi pressed Condit about whether he consulted anyone else's polls.

Condit said he hadn't. Condit said he recalled only doing one poll ever, probably in 1989.

But in the fall of 2001, public records show, Condit's campaign did hire pollsters.

Condit's campaign paid $13,500 on Oct. 19, 2001, for a "voter survey" conducted by a Portland, Ore. firm called Grove Quirk Insight, Federal Election Commission records show. Condit's campaign paid an additional $4,500 to the same firm on Nov. 2.

Condit's attorney, L. Lin Wood, said Friday that a voter survey is not the same as a poll and would probably not be collecting the same kind of information.

At the time of the fall 2001 survey, Condit was facing considerable media scrutiny in the wake of Levy's disappearance.

A one-time Bureau of Prisons intern who was raised in Modesto, Levy was last seen alive in Washington on April 30, 2001. Condit has not denied subsequent published reports that he ultimately told law enforcement officials he had a sexual relationship with her. His children, however, recently have denied the reports.

Levy's skeletal remains were discovered in Washington in May 2002.

Police say Condit is not a suspect, and no suspect has been publicly identified.

Nonetheless, in August 2001 a nationwide Gallup Poll found that 62 percent of those surveyed believed Condit was involved in the disappearance. A nationwide NBC/Zogby poll that same month found 93 percent said they believed Condit worried more about his political career than about Levy.

Polls only a 'snapshot'

Wood called the polls "a snapshot" that can't capture the totality of a man's reputation. He noted there's a difference between suggestions of sexual indiscretion and being accused of complicity in a crime.

In December 2001, Dunne discussed the Levy disappearance on syndicated radio's "Laura Ingraham Show." He floated a scenario in which Condit was linked to Levy's disappearance, citing as sources a "procurer" and an animal trainer he dubbed the horse whisperer.

"According to what the procurer told the horse whisperer, who told me, Gary Condit was often a guest at some of the Middle Eastern embassies in Washington where all the ladies were, and that he had let it be known that he was in a relationship that was over, but she was a clinger," Dunne said. "He couldn't get rid of her."

Condit sued, citing these and other public statements. None of the myriad tabloid allegations, Condit claims, hurt him as much those floated by an established writer such as Dunne.

Because Condit is a public figure, he must show Dunne knowingly lied or acted with "reckless disregard" for whether his statements were true. This is why Wood is zeroing in on what Dunne now concedes to be fundamental flaws in the secondhand horse whisperer's yarn.

"You now acknowledge you got hoodwinked?" Wood asked during Dunne's September deposition.

"I did," Dunne replied.

"That story was bogus, true?" Wood asked.

"Brilliantly bogus, but bogus," Dunne conceded.

Doubts about horse whisperer

Even before Dunne appeared on the "Laura Ingraham Show," he acknowledged that he had concluded the horse whisperer was "a (expletive) liar" on at least one point.

"And that is when you first began to doubt the truth of what he told you, right?" Wood asked.

"Yeah, yeah," Dunne said.

Dunne agreed the lie gave him reason to suspect the horse whisperer had lied about other parts of the story. Nonetheless, he later relayed the horse whisperer's yarn on Ingraham's national program.

"I think Gary has a very strong case that this was actual malice," Wood said.

If Dunne's reporting is indeed deemed tantamount to reckless disregard, he might bounce back several ways. Sometimes, libel defendants prevail by showing the plaintiffs already had a reputation impervious to further harm. This is called being libel-proof.

In the mid-1970s, for instance, used car dealer Henry Wynberg sued the National Enquirer over stories that he had exploited for commercial gain his fling with actress Elizabeth Taylor. Wynberg lost after the federal judge noted he had a criminal record and a "reputation for taking advantage of women generally."

"There comes a time when the individual's reputation is sufficiently low in the public's estimation that he can only recover nominal damages for subsequent defamation statements," U.S. District Judge Albert Lee Stephens Jr. reasoned.

Judges have clarified that only an "exceptional" character such as a reputed mobster may be entirely libel-proof. Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, added that it's "rarely successful" as a complete libel defense.

However, a plaintiff's reputation could be deemed low enough to reduce any dollar award.

"Condit certainly suffered adverse effects to his reputation from his own conduct," said Abraham Sofaer, a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and a former federal judge who oversaw Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unsuccessful $50 million libel suit against Time magazine. "I believe this could rarely if ever be used to dismiss claims, but could frequently be used to mitigate damages."

Where Tiger Lil comes in

In the early 1960s, for instance, the Saturday Evening Post published "They Call Me Tiger Lil." The article investigated "an itinerant dancer who has been kicking her way through chorus lines since the age of 14"; a whiskey-swilling woman, the article said, who "would go to the ladies room, and on the way she would end up in some brawl."

The woman sued, but a judge subsequently reduced the damage award as being "grossly excessive" since the woman's "reputation (already) was substantially tarnished" by her actions.

Dunne's attorneys maintain they can win altogether. But if they don't, they are hoping to save their client money and grief by hammering home the same point made by Tiger Lil's judge.

"Condit, if he had planned to, could not have systematically destroyed his own reputation better," LiCalsi said on Fox News Channel.

Bee Washington Bureau reporter Michael Doyle can be reached at 202-383-0006 or mdoyle@mcclatchydc.com.

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benn



Joined: 19 Sep 2002
Posts: 2136
Location: Sacramento, CA

PostPosted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 4:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hello skipper. I sent Doyle an email. My subject was not much about the Dunne trial but mostly a theoretical of what could have happened to Chandra Levy.

benn
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laskipper



Joined: 17 Sep 2002
Posts: 1232
Location: Northern Ohio

PostPosted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 4:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Good going, Benn!

Mike Doyle is one of the few reporters that has been faithful to keep the truth out there.

ls
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jane



Joined: 22 Sep 2002
Posts: 3225

PostPosted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A voter survey is not the same as a poll? Give me a break, Lin Wood!
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rd



Joined: 13 Sep 2002
Posts: 9273
Location: Jacksonville, FL

PostPosted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Really! Good article from Mike Doyle. I still contend that repeating that story is no more libel than what the National Enquirer reported a few weeks ago. It implies that at worst someone who overheard Condit took matters in their own hands. It in no way accuses Condit of anything.

Condit cannot win any amount of money, but first we get to watch what the FBI or grand jury does when he answers under oath differently than what he told the police, at least one of his four stories he told the police.

rd
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