Evergreen Couple Portrayed As Anti-Semites Keeps $10 Million Judgment

The Denver Channel (ABC) ^

[per loin]

Evergreen Couple Portrayed As Anti-Semites Keeps $10 Million Judgment

Quigleys Sue Anti-Defamation League After Fight With Their Jewish Neighbors

POSTED: 6:23 am MST March 2,

2004
UPDATED: 9:51 am MST March 2,

2004
DENVER -- A jury award of more than $10 million to a former Evergreen couple portrayed as anti-Semites by the Anti-Defamation League will stand, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review it.

The decision on Monday means "this is the end of the case," said Bruce DeBoskey, director of the ADL's Mountain States Region.

The victors in the case are William and Dorothy "Dee" Quigley, whose lawyer, Jay Horowitz, described them as "extraordinarily delighted" with the news.

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision came without explanation, and DeBoskey said it was a disappointment.

"But through the entire process we have continued to serve the community," he said. "We do remain committed to our fight against hatred and racism and bigotry and extremism and anti-Semitism."

The fight was between the Quigleys and their Jewish neighbors, Mitchell and Candice Aronson.

The Aronsons sought help from the ADL in 1994 after overhearing the Quigleys' comments on a cordless telephone, a signal that was picked up by the Aronson's police scanner.

They said they heard the Quigleys discuss a campaign to drive them from the upscale Evergreen neighborhood with Nazi scare tactics, including tossing lampshades and soap on their lawn and putting pictures of Holocaust ovens on their house.

Based on recordings of those calls, 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 press conference.

But later authorities discovered the recordings became illegal just five days after they began when President Bill Clinton signed a new wiretap restriction into federal law.

The hate charges were dropped, Jefferson County paid the Quigleys $75,000 and two lawyers on the ADL's volunteer board paid the Quigleys $350,000 to settle a lawsuit.

Neither family paid the other anything, the Aronsons divorced and the Quigleys moved to another state.

Then in 2000 a federal jury concluded a four-week trial before Denver U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham with a decision the Anti-Defamation League had defamed the Quigleys.

The jury awarded them $10.5 million, which is now estimated at $12.5 million including interest.

DeBoskey said the ADL had set aside funds to pay the judgment if necessary.
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[American_Centurion]

Forgot to add.

Based on my previous reply, the Quigleys were defamed.

[Bonaparte]

Why are you reluctant to answer a simple question, BH?

Don't you agree with me that it's an outrage to surreptitiously tap, record and release the marital conversations of neighbors without their knowledge and consent?

[per loin]

All true but what is sad is that in the future when there is a real threat of anti-semitism, no one may listen. It's the old story of the boy who cried wolf too often.

Yes. That's what makes Abe Foxman and his crew such a despicable bunch.

[per loin]

You've already defined yourself as one who I've no interest in further conversation with. Learn to look up facts for yourself.

[Boot Hill]

"You claimed that the Quigleys "skated on a technicality". That implies that you believe that they should have been publicly proclaimed anti-semitic, and sued and maybe charged with a hate crime."

The highlighted portions imply no such thing. What I've been saying (not implying) from the start is that, in my opinion, the Quigley's should not have prevailed in their defamation suit against the ADL. From everything I've read here, the comments by the Quigley's were indeed anti-Semitic.

--Boot Hill

[Boot Hill]

"Why are you reluctant to answer a simple question, BH?"

Because it is not a subject I'm interested in addressing here. What part of that are you having a hard time understanding? The only issue that interests me here is the defamation trial, that this thread is primarily about. Please see the thread title for a hint. If you want to engage in side issues, feel free, but do it with someone who cares to address those issues.

--Boot Hill

[Bonaparte]

How do you feel about unreasonable search and seizure, BH?

Do you believe that practice should be made legal?

How about peeping toms, BH?

Do you think it's alright to peer into a couple's bedroom window at night?

Don't you wonder what other matters the Quigleys were privately discussing during these illegally intercepted conversations?

How would you feel about your neighbor wiretapping or bugging you and then revealing the substance of your private conversations in press conferences?

Would that be ok with you?

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

after overhearing the Quigleys' telephone remarks on their Radio Shack police scanner.

Think Digital Spread Spectrum (DSS).

[Boot Hill]

"You've already defined yourself as one who I've no interest in further conversation with."

Translation of the above:   "I got caught sort of "ad-libbing" a few quotes here and there on this thread and since I don't have any links to back them up, I'm cutting and running."

Bye-bye!

--Boot Hill

[Bonaparte]

"...side issues..."

But it's not a "side issue," BH. Two types of criminal privacy invasion were directly involved in the plaintiffs suit against ADL. Defamation was only one of the charges and it arose out of the privacy invasion.

The trial jury thought it was relevant -- to the tune of millions of dollars in award. And after all ADL's appeals were exhausted, those awards were upheld. Of course it's relevant.

So why are you so unwilling to answer a simple question?

[American_Centurion]

I think they were defamed, because everyone has a reasonable right to private conversation.

Beliefs expressed in privacy, not publicly, may indeed be two-faced (hence why I wouldn't go to dinner with them) but are still private. Making public beliefs that have not been expressed or acted upon publicly is defamation.

This would be no different than outing a homosexual who wanted his/her sexual proclivities to remain private. To publicly expose their practices without consent is defamation when it has a negative effect on their public stature.

Being viewed as anti-semitic has even more of a negative effect on public stature than being homosexual does, hence defamation.

[Boot Hill]

See post #86 for a clue to your answers.

--Boot Hill

[per loin]

Translation of the above: "I got caught sort of "ad-libbing" a few quotes here and there on this thread and since I don't have any links to back them up, I'm cutting and running."

OK. Let's see if you have yet learned the integrity to admit it when you are wrong: here and here

[per loin]

I don't think DSS was available in 1994, but it could have prevented the whole dust up.

[Bonaparte]

Oh, I already know that you're "not interested" in answering a simple question that has direct relevance to the matter at hand.

I'm just wondering why you're fighting this simple, direct, highly relevant question so tenaciously.

If you have no opinion on invasion of privacy, why not say so?

If you do have an opinion on the legally relevant question of privacy invasion, then why not state it?

[Adder]

Sorry...I must have been misreading this early in the am...I thought you were saying the ADL was justified.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

If you had a AN/TRC-173 it was. (What, you don't have one?)

[kittymyrib]

The enemies of Jesus need these laws in place so in the future when our children and grandchildren speak out against evil as they have been taught from the Bible, the secular authorities can arrest them for "hate speech." I will be gone by then, but it will be a time of great persecution for the children of God.

[per loin]

Nope. In fact I'm thinking of going back to a rotary dial. I miss that clickety-click sound.

[nathanbedford]

Exactly.

Nothing could better illustrate the potential danger to all our constitutional liberties from this Hate Crime madness than this wretched Quigley affair. Hate Crime legislation has so far proven to be a far greater actual threat and source of big brother abuse than the Patriot Act.

We all enjoy a constitutional right to be anti-semitic and not a few Jews exercise that right against semitic Arabs right here on this forum. Just because our birthright as Americans comes with a right to hate your neighbor on account of the accident of his birth does not mean that to exercise that prerogative is moral and right. But to prohibit its exercise, without accompanying action, is dangerous and unconstitutional.