There's been some more movement in the matter of Dan Rather's lawsuit against CBS, after yesterday presiding judge Justice Ira Gammerman of the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan re-affirmed January's preliminary ruling against CBS on their motion to dismiss. Here's a statement issued last night by Gary Meyerhoff, an attorney at Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal representing Rather:
"Today, Judge Gammerman re-affirmed that Mr. Rather's lawsuit will not be dismissed, that he expects to issue a written opinion on defendants' motion to dismiss within the next few weeks, and that, accordingly, discovery will proceed. The Judge also heard brief argument on certain document disputes. Mr. Rather's counsel challenged CBS' assertion that certain of its communications with investigator Eric Rigler were privileged; CBS defended its position, and Judge Gammerman requested that the documents be delivered to the Court for its review. Mr. Rather's counsel also requested that defendants identify the names of employees whose documents were searched in response to Mr. Rather's requests and, after brief argument, the defendants agreed to do so. Defendants' counsel demanded to know when Mr. Rather would begin producing documents they had requested, and Mr. Rather's counsel responded that production would begin next week."
What does this mean? Well, it means that the case is definitely going forward, and the judge's written ruling will shortly be explaining why, count by count. The defendants moved to dismiss each legal claim in the 32-page complaint, and the opinion will lay out which claims will be going forward (presumably most of them but not necessarily all).
As for the documents under dispute, a quickie lesson in attorney-client privilege: "Privilege" exists in law to keep certain documents from being admissable in lawsuits. It's a pretty slim category, and tough to make a case for, as Judy Miller has discovered. In the case of attorney-client privilege, however, the idea is to encourage full and honest communications between lawyer and client, so those communications are protected so clients can speak to their counsel without fear of reprisal. Of course, knowing that protection exists means that there is an envelope to be pushed, and that's why the legal department of many a company is cc'd on pretty much everything, just in case. Thus it becomes the job of the court to figure out what really IS privileged information between the client — in this case CBS — and their lawyers. So here, the question is whether the communications with the investigator, Eric Rigler, were legitimately privileged communications. That's about the most I can simplify it; from here it gets complicated as the case is made on either side. According to a representative from the Rather team, it may require the submission of separate legal briefs to Judge Gammerman on this point. All of which is critical to the production of documents for discovery — which, as Dan Rather has said in the past, is what he's really looking forward to (and, as we've said in the past, CBS obviously doesn't want).
Recall that CBS' original motion to dismiss called the allegations "baseless" and "bizarre" and said the lawsuit was "wholly without merit." It also argued that the suit was a "thinly-disguised" defamation suit and as such was time-barred due to statutes of limitations. Obviously Judge Gammerman thought differently. We did, too, back in November when the motion to dismiss was filed, so if you're impatient to see Judge Gammerman's ruling you can sate yourself with ETP's armchair legal analysis (written by a lawyer who hasn't practiced in years).
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/oh-its-on-dan_n_92025.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
