Defamation

Richard H. Glanton, former general counsel to Lincoln University and president of the Barnes Foundation, yesterday defended his withering criticism of the former president of the university who was forced from office in September 1998 amid allegations of fiscal mismanagement and whom he once characterized as "huffing and puffing two steps from jail. " Testifying in Common Pleas Court on the seventh day of trial in a defamation and malpractice suit brought against him by the former president, Niara Sudarkasa, Glanton called himself a "loyal servant to the university" who was unwilling to become "a scapegoat, a patsy" for Sudarkasa and various Lincoln board members who he said were engaged in a "cover-up" of questionable financial and business affairs.

IT'S SAFE TO SAY that schools Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. has plenty on his plate these days. School closings. Doomsday budgets. District layoffs that never seem to end. Meanwhile, south of the Mason-Dixon Line, a Maryland woman hopes Hite can clear his calendar for one minute so he can be served with legal papers. Carol Barbour, 44, of Upper Marlboro, Md., is slapping Hite, 51, with a second federal lawsuit, accusing him of defamation and other charges. The claims stem from a federal lawsuit Barbour filed in March 2012 against Hite and his previous employer, Prince George's County Public Schools, alleging racial and age discrimination as well as retaliation.

A federal court jury yesterday found that lawyer Richard Glanton sexually harassed and defamed Kathleen Frederick, an associate lawyer he supervised, but awarded her only $125,000 in damages. The jury of five men and five women deliberated about 13 hours over three days before returning with a verdict that appeared to be a compromise. Frederick was seeking more than $2 million in damages. The damages were awarded to Frederick not for the sexual harassment but for the defamation - for statements that Glanton, a former aide to Gov. Dick Thornburgh and president of the Barnes Foundation, made to reporters in January 1992 after he learned of Frederick's suit.

A Morristown, N.J., tax-collection firm headed by former Gov. Jim Florio of New Jersey has made inroads in Pennsylvania since putting that state's ex-Gov. Mark Schweiker on its board, riling a rival who says the governors' business, Xspand Inc., doesn't play fair. A federal lawsuit filed in April by Municipal Revenue Services Inc., of Erie, accuses Xspand of defamation, unfair competition and contract interference. MRS says Xspand sent hundreds of letters to Pennsylvania towns stating that doing deals with MRS could hurt their credit ratings, and that towns face legal restrictions on their use of money collected from MRS. MRS owner Charles Herron, Erie's former city treasurer, calls those claims "false" and "damaging," and he has asked the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania to order Xspand to send out letters setting the record straight.

Richard Turkington, 63, of Collegeville, a Villanova University law professor for 27 years who was a leading expert on the First Amendment and privacy laws, died of cancer May 20 at home. "He was a pioneer in the area," said John Decker, a professor at DePaul University Law School in Chicago and a friend. "Nobody dealt as deeply or comprehensively with the issue of privacy as he did. " Professor Turkington wrote Teacher's Manual for Privacy and was contributing editor to AIDS, A Medical-Legal Handbook and AIDS, Law and Society.

A Burlington County Superior Court judge has tentatively ruled that residents of a Mount Laurel housing development did not defame developer J.S. Hovnanian & Sons Inc. when they picketed outside a second Hovnanian development in 1984 to protest a change in zoning. Hovnanian had sued several residents of the 869-home Birchfield development who had carried signs protesting the proposed development in Birchfield of industrial buildings on lots that they said the developer had promised to set aside for commercial sites.

OF ALL the important news stories that the Daily News could have chosen to put on its front page - the recent dramatic rescue of an American POW, for example - the paper chose a spurious, sensationalistic expose of alleged sex acts between men in some of Philadelphia's public restrooms. The article ("Looking for love in public places" April 30) is full of speculation, broad generalizations and unnamed sources. In fact, it failed to quote anyone by name who either engaged in or witnessed these supposed acts.

ON DEC. 14, on the "Daily News Live" show, columnist Marcus Hayes referred to some Notre Dame fans as insufferable. He is certainly qualified to recognize "insufferable" - he is the personification of it. J. T. Murphy Feasterville Marcus Hayes callously grouped together all Irish-Catholics as Notre Dame fans and placed blame on them as the single factor that we are insufferable. What a lame argument. I know very proper Protestants and black Baptists who are also loud and boisterous Notre Dame fans.

The Obama administration is requiring health insurers to cover contraception, even for employees of Catholic institutions that are opposed to the practice. Most of the Republican presidential candidates have characterized that as an assault on the cherished American doctrine of religious liberty. Rick Santorum recently accused the president and others of trying to "marginalize faith," going so far as to suggest that American Christians are on their way to the guillotine. Such talk amounts to rank hypocrisy.

A federal judge in Philadelphia has dismissed a claim by Carl R. Greene, the ousted executive director of the Philadelphia Housing Authority, that he had been defamed by the PHA chairman, former Mayor John F. Street. Street had described Greene to the press and PHA board as a "serial sexual harasser. " But in a decision issued Jan. 20, U.S. District Judge Ronald L. Buckwalter said Street, as PHA's chairman, was a "high public official" who had immunity. The judge also dismissed Greene's assertion that his employment contract amounted to a property interest, and that he had been denied his due process to defend it. But Buckwalter signaled that Greene might have a claim regarding his due process to protect his reputation.