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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[mdmathis6]

The threats were never made or carried out...! Tell me you have never had a converstioan or a thought that you would be publically embarrassed or even arrested for if it got out the same way the Quigley's comments got out?!

[Oztrich Boy]

I think the Freepers supporting the decision against the ADL are missing a critical point: there is a difference between comments and threats.

No. Commemts and threats are expressed publically. These alleged statements weren't.

[TheDon]

That's if you believe there is such a thing as a "hate crime" and this constituted one.

[VaGunGuy]

Somehow I can't help but think that ADL's attorneys made similar arguments before the court, with an end result that they received massive judicial smackies.

[VaGunGuy]

You might as well claim that the entire justice system is anti-semetic, since they ordered the taking of ADL's cheese.

[VaGunGuy]

"Could remarks regarding "Nazi scare tactics, including tossing lampshades and soap on their lawn and putting pictures of Holocaust ovens on their house" be reasonably construed as being anti-Semitic?"

That shows how little you actually understand about defamation....Remember, the Quigleys were not public figures. Their conversations were privileged. Their converstations were surreptitiously intercepted by a third party in violation of both State and Federal statutes, on the orders of the ADL.

[VaGunGuy]

I don't claim to know all aspects of wiretapping laws in all states, but here at least, you cannot record conversations between third parties without their consent, unless you are actually THERE at the time of the conversation, and they KNOW you're there. The means are irrelevant. I know this because I almost got thrown in jail for recording half of a third party telephone conversation back in '92.

[per loin]

I am happy for the way this turned out. The couple who did those recordings was looking for a lottery win and they got bit on the ass.

It Appears the Quigleys let the Aronsons off with a handshake, but hit the ADL for $10 million.

The most incredible part of the whole story is the near silence of the press about the ADL getting whacked by the courts over this. Compare that quiet to the wide publication of the ADL's false claims of anti-semitism in Mel's masterpiece.

[krb]

The most incredible part of the whole story is the near silence of the press about the ADL getting whacked by the courts

Indeed.

[Bonaparte]

"The case may have risen out of an invasion of privacy, but there is no evidence before us that the privacy issue played any role in the jury's decision on the charge of defamation."

No evidence from the article? But there is, BH:

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.

In other words, the clandestine recordings were what was used by the Aransons, their lawyers and the ADL to defame the Quigleys. As such, those recordings constituted a crime in themselves, ie. invasion of privacy. And that invasion of privacy constituted not only a criminal offense, but a cause of action as well.

From the legal staff of the American Jewish Committee, a source sympathetic to the Aronsons and the ADL (even they don't claim that the Quigley's causes of action were limited only to defamation):

Trial in this case commenced April 3, 2000, and on April 28, 2000, a twelve-person jury found the defendants liable for defamation, invasion of privacy, false light invasion of privacy and violation of the Federal Wiretap Act. The agency’s liability under the wiretap act was based on the jury’s finding that the Aronsons’ attorneys had acted as agents of ADL in filing the Aronsons’ civil complaint against the Quigleys, which contained some excerpts of the intercepted conversations, even though no one at ADL had listened to the tapes or read transcripts of the intercepted conversations. The jury awarded $1.5million damages to the Quigleys to compensate them for economic and noneconomic injury. The jury also awarded $9 million in punitive damages. The district court refused to set the verdict aside or eliminate or reduce the damages.

So, now there is "evidence before us" that the privacy issue "played a role" (a central role, actually) in the jury's decision to reach the verdict that is the subject of this thread's article. Accodingly, you should have no trouble answering the questions I posed to you, since your objection was that those questions were not relevant to this case and its outcome.

[DentsRun]

I question why anyone would seek such a law in the first place, unless there is an underlying agenda, and that is where I am stuck. How can someone be punished worse for a hate murder than a regular murder? The victim is dead, the perpetrator did it, and I'm supposed to feel better that we have discovered a motive involving hate, and that is punishable by death under the hate crimes law, and that death is far worse than the other death?

Well, you're right. Hate crime legislation will have no effect on the punishments for real criminals while criminalizing what ordinary people say or do. Remember in the 2000 election, the daughter of that black man who was dragged to death in Texas castigated Bush for not supporting hate crime legislation as governor of Texas. When that matter came up in a debate Bush quite correctly pointed out that two of the three perpetrators were sentenced to death and the other to life in prison. What would a hate crime law add to their punishment, he asked, given that they'd already received the maximum penalty already?

I don't know what the woman was thinking. Maybe she wanted them beaten first, then executed. Or perhaps, as one Nation of Islam leader once suggested, she wanted the criminals dug up and shot again because the first time around they didn't die "hard enough."

[Bonaparte]

My questions to you (in case you've forgotten) are:

1. Did the Quigleys make their remarks in public or did they make their remarks with reasonable expectation of privacy? [post 41]

2. 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? [post 82]

3.Don't you wonder what other matters the Quigleys were privately discussing during these illegally intercepted conversations? [post 87]

4. How would you feel about your neighbor wiretapping or bugging you and then revealing the substance of your private conversations in press conferences? [post 87]

Your objection as to relevance is a non-starter, as I just demonstrated in post 151.

[Bonaparte]

NB. In case you didn't know, the wiretap complaint was the only cause of action that was federal. The other three, involving invasion of privacy and defamation, were violations of Colorado state law. And, as we know,

1) the jury found the defendants liable on all four transgressions

and

2) the defendants failed in their appeals to both the 10th Circuit and the USSC.

[Cboldt]

From my perspective there is only one question: Could remarks regarding "Nazi scare tactics, including tossing lampshades and soap on their lawn and putting pictures of Holocaust ovens on their house" be reasonably construed as being anti-Semitic?

To me the answer is an unequivocal yes!

The question "Could the remarks be reasonably construed as being anti-Semitic?" is different from the question of "Did the remarks rise to the level where they in fact WERE anti-Semitic?" On that second question, I must assume the answer is no. Because, if the remarks and speakers of the remarks were in fact anti-Semitic, then there is no defamation. Truth of statment is a defense to the civil claim of defamation, and these people won their suit against the ADL. The conclusion of the court is that the ADL defamed the plaintiff.

Further, in this case, the award was triple what was sought, which indicates to me that the court applied special damages, punitive in nature.

Now, you may disagree with the outcome, and your diffference then is with the court.

[Cboldt]

And there is irony in that -- the Anti Defamation League being found liable for Defamation.

[Bonaparte]

"...your diffference then is with the court."

And with the facts. And with the law.

[Old Professer]

Silence is golden...

[Cboldt]

I'd say the ADL was in the right on this one, but lost on a technicality.

I think evidence of what was said came in, but not in the form of the tapes. Without some sort of evidence of the conversation (e.g., "I overheard those people say ..."), there is no case whatsoever. Nothing. One of the linked articles says that the jury expressed an opinion regarding what was said -- I think the jury's comment was something like "the comments seemed more like joking."

The ADL stepped on their own crank, in the jury's judgement. Now, if the plaintif couple is in fact anti-Semitic, then the ADL and everybody else is free to go out and state that fact, and there will be no risk of civil liability. None!

[squidly]

Was making a snap judgment based on this article alone. I guess one usually shows ignorance when doing that.