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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