Posted on 07/09/2008 6:25:47 AM PDT by gridlock
WASHINGTON — A federal judge has thrown out former California Congressman Gary Condit's defamation lawsuit against author Dominick Dunne, extending the one-time lawmaker's costly courtroom losing streak over rumors of his relationship to murdered intern Chandra Levy.
In a 22-page opinion issued Tuesday morning, U.S. District Judge Peter Leisure summarily dismissed Condit's suit and ruled the First Amendment as well as California law protected Dunne's expressions of opinion. The ruling further shrinks Condit's legal maneuvering room.
"I'm just delighted," Dunne's attorney Paul LiCalsi said Tuesday. "This was an abusive lawsuit all along."
(snip)
The new ruling comes one year after an Arizona state judge dismissed a separate lawsuit filed by Condit against the weekly Sonoran News. The judge also ordered Condit to pay $43,680.42 for filing a frivolous suit.
"The Sonoran News is currently in the process of enforcing its judgment," the newspaper's attorney, Daniel Barr, said Tuesday.
Barr added that expects a lien will be attached on California property still owned by the Condit family. Similar charges of filing frivolous suits dog Condit in the Dunne case, where Dunne's attorneys retain the option of seeking financial sanctions against the attorney who first filed the lawsuit. That attorney later conceded the case lacked merit. Conceivably, that attorney could face fines.
"We haven't made a final decision on that yet," LiCalsi said.
Since leaving Congress in January 2003, Condit and his wife Carolyn relocated to Arizona. The Condit family ran two Baskin-Robbins ice cream stores, but have since been sued by the company over alleged management failures. A one-day civil trial concluded in October, and a ruling is pending.
(Excerpt) Read more at mcclatchydc.com ...
From reading the article, I would have to conclude thet Gary Condit was one of those Independent Congressmen you keep reading so much about, and did not belong to a political party...
Congress critters, they can run all our lives but can’t even run an ice cream store.
No one cares anymore. Condit must be after $$$$$$$.
Looks like the only thing Condit can run is “to court”.
I’m LMAO at your tagline, that’s brutal!
(at the risk of getting TMI, how do you KNOW that Obama-lama-ding-dong’s wife smells?)
Since Condit has failed at everything else, it looks like his new job is to sue people. Not working out too well for him, lately...
Maybe he and Larry Klayman should compare notes, they’re both batting 1000.
I just checked, #9 was my 30,000th reply.
What a thing to waste on Condidit.
It’s kind of frightening to think that a man who knows so little about how the law works was in Congress for 4 years. Frightening, but nor surprising.
This case is so September 10th.
Did the authorities ever find the killer? This case and that of David Westerfield both troubled me greatly as I followed and participated in the discussions on thread. Why both? Because of the sleazoid factor — the utter distain for normal morals within a marriage. In Condit’s case it made him, in my book, suspect numero uno, and in the Westerfield case it made him, in my book, a saint compared to the parents of the young Danielle, it seemed to me that the Dad was esuspecto numero uno.
I get a chill (and not the good kind running up my leg) whenever I hear about him, because that was part of the trivial obsession we were mired in when our world changed, along with Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, sharks, and a host of other things.
The Onion ran a brilliant article on that, titled "A Shattered Nation Longs to Care About Stupid Bull***t Again".
Condit was the most major beneficiary of 9-11 in the world. This story was headline news the day before 9-11 and it seemed obvious enough that the guy had something to do with the girl turning up missing and dead, and the question involved the degree to which Washington insiders with names other than KKKlinton might be above the law.
It's in the title. Didn't you catch it? When a Democrat Congressman is involved in scandal and wrongdoing to the point that the press has to write a story about it, they always put the abbreviated "Rep." in front of his/her name to dupe their uneducaed leftist base into thinking he is a Republican. They did the same thing with Rep. William Jefferson.
Luckiest SOB on the planet. Without 9/11 he would have gone down harder and faster - there would have been no opportunity to mismanage 2 Baskin Robbins stores, LOL.
“....The Condit family ran two Baskin-Robbins ice cream stores, but have since been sued by the company over alleged management failures...”
That settles it!! As a qualification, anyone running for congress must be able to successfully run two ice parlors.
Add this to the Senate dining hall going bankrupt and one may conclude our Royal Elected Rulers are incompetent. /s
The story I was seeing in the news at the time involved some sort of a sex club whose membership included both US congressmen and foreign dignitaries, particularly from the middle east. The basic gist of it was that the girl was less than happy with her introduction to whatever that was about and somebody likely decided she knew too much. Kind of like the stories of Vince Foster or Jim McDougal, dying from “pressure on the brain”....
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