ZGram - 3/3/2004 - "ADL lost big - for once!"

zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org
Thu Mar 4 15:04:44 EST 2004




ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!

March 3, 2004

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Welcome news for dissidents:  For once - and high time, too - the 
ADL is going to have to pay someone they smeared. 

Imagine once I start collecting those in the habit of smearing me! 
Our friendly schmierfinks simply copied MY bio from MY website and 
called me an "extremist" on that basis - the very bio I had used for 
an entire decade doing hundreds of keynotes all over the country 
without anyone having an inkling what a "dangerous" person I was!

[START]

ADL must pay in Evergreen case

Denounced as anti-Semites, pair is owed millions

By Karen Abbott, Rocky Mountain News
March 2, 2004

The Anti-Defamation League must pay a former Evergreen couple it 
denounced as anti-Semites more than $10 million, after the U.S. 
Supreme Court refused Monday to review the lawsuit.

"This is the end of the case," said Bruce DeBoskey, director of the 
league's Mountain States Region, which includes Colorado and Wyoming.

Denver attorney Jay Horowitz, who won the case for William and 
Dorothy "Dee" Quigley, said the couple was "extraordinarily 
delighted" when he told them the news Monday.

The widely publicized court battle drew friend-of-the-court briefs 
from a variety of national advocacy organizations worried that the 
danger of huge legal liabilities threatened their ability to work for 
good causes.

"There were 15 other human rights organizations that filed briefs in 
support of our legal position," DeBoskey said.

The U.S. Supreme Court did not explain why it declined to review the case.

"We're all disappointed," DeBoskey said. "But as a practical matter, 
through the entire process, we have continued to serve the community."

"We do remain committed to our fight against hatred and racism and 
bigotry and extremism and anti-Semitism," he said.

The dispute that raged for nearly a decade through the federal courts 
began when the Quigleys' dog fought with a dog owned by their Jewish 
neighbors, Mitchell and Candice Aronson, in their upscale foothills 
neighborhood.

The Aronsons called the ADL in 1994, after overhearing the Quigleys' 
telephone remarks on their Radio Shack police scanner. They said they 
heard the Quigleys discuss a campaign to drive them from the 
neighborhood with Nazi scare tactics, including tossing lampshades 
and soap on their lawn, putting pictures of Holocaust ovens on their 
house and dousing one of their children with flammable liquid.

The Aronsons were advised to record the conversations. Based on the 
recordings, they sued the Quigleys in federal court, Jefferson County 
prosecutors charged the Quigleys with hate crimes, and Saul 
Rosenthal, then the ADL's regional director, denounced the Quigleys 
as anti-Semites in a news conference.

The Quigleys got death threats and hate mail.

Later, everyone found out that the recordings became illegal just 
five days after they began, when President Clinton signed a new 
wiretap restriction into federal law.

The hate charges were dropped, and Jefferson County paid the Quigleys 
$75,000 after prosecutors concluded Dee Quigley's remarks to a friend 
were only in jest. Two lawyers on the ADL's volunteer board, who had 
advised the Aronsons, paid the Quigleys $350,000 to settle a lawsuit.

The Quigleys and Aronsons dropped their legal attacks on one another, 
and neither family paid the other anything. The Aronsons divorced. 
The Quigleys moved to another state.

But a federal jury found in 2000, after a four-week trial before 
Denver U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham, that the 
Anti-Defamation League had defamed the Quigleys. The jury awarded 
them $10.5 million.

The ADL appealed, and the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of 
Appeals ruled last year that the jury's award stood.

DeBoskey said the long legal proceedings allowed the ADL to set aside 
funds to pay the judgment if necessary. Some the money will come from 
insurance and some will come from other sources, including donors, 
but none will come from the ADL's operating budget, DeBoskey said.

Horowitz estimated the judgment now totals more than $12.5 million, 
once interest is included.

He said the Quigleys suffered greatly because they were branded as 
anti-Semites. William Quigley's career in the motion picture industry 
was virtually destroyed, Horowitz said.

"They cannot express how life-altering the ADL's actions have been," 
Horowitz said.

The Quigleys' children were affected because "they grew up during 
some of the most trying circumstances of this case," he said.

At one point, the family hired bodyguards. They received a box of dog 
feces in the mail. Their own Catholic priest criticized them from the 
pulpit.

abbottk at RockyMountainNews.com 

[END]

=====

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