Defamation

HARRISBURG - Pennsylvania's highest court is revisiting a $3.5 million defamation verdict against The Citizens' Voice newspaper because of the role played by two former judges at the center of a juvenile justice scandal. The state Supreme Court today appointed a judge to examine the Wilkes-Barre newspaper's claim that corruption was involved in the handling of the lawsuit by a businessman and one of his companies. The high court wants the judge to recommend whether a new trial is warranted.

Several parents at the Agora Cyber Charter School in Devon who asked questions about the school's finances have been sued by the founder and her management company. Dorothy June Brown contends that the parents and the Agora Parent Organization defamed her and Cynwyd Group L.L.C. in complaints sent to the state Department of Education and in e-mails circulated to other parents at the statewide cyber school. The parents say they were just trying to get answers about the relationship between Cynwyd Group and Agora.

Mississippi coach Andy Kennedy filed suit against a cabdriver who charged him with assault and a parking valet who said he witnessed the incident, charging both with defamation. Attorney Richard Katz said he filed the suit yesterday afternoon in Hamilton County (Ohio) Court of Common Pleas. Named as defendents in the suit were driver Mohammed Oulf Jiddou and valet Michael Strother. The suit asks for damages of more than $25,000 from each. Jiddou, 25, a native of Mauritania, in northwest Africa, charged that Kennedy, 40, struck him in the face and used racial insults, including calling him Osama bin Laden, after trying to get into his cab, after he and several members of his coaching staff had left a bar in downtown Cincinnati.

Republican City Councilman Jack Kelly is suing a Lawncrest man for a smear campaign that Kelly says nearly cost him last year's general election. Kelly sued Paul D. Corbett and Corbett's loosely assembled group, Citizens Opposed to Politicians Who Pander to Perverts, in Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas last month, asking for at least $50,000 in defamation damages. He is paying his own legal expenses. Kelly argues that Corbett, also a Republican, and other members of COPPP "publicly and privately embarrassed and shamed" him by distributing flyers in church parking lots in the weeks before the November election.

The second-grade teacher who is suing the Baldwin School and the Gladwyne family she said caused her to lose her job is making new allegations: witness intimidation, obstruction of justice, and defamation. In court documents filed late yesterday, Patricia Tollin alleges that the Main Line girls' school and Michael and Sheryl Pouls "have engaged in a pattern of harassing and intimidating witnesses in this matter . . . both on and off the Baldwin School campus. " For example, the amended complaint alleges that a Baldwin trustee "offered a witness in this matter a 'scholarship' for the witness' child, in exchange for testimony favorable to the defendants.

Donald Trump's day in the Philadelphia region wasn't a total bust. Despite the defeat of the developer's casino plan, Trump - angered by a biography that calls him a mere millionaire instead of the billionaire he says he is - won a key court victory that advances his defamation lawsuit against the writer, New York Times reporter Timothy L. O'Brien. State Superior Court Judge Irvin J. Snyder ruled in Camden that O'Brien must disclose the three confidential sources who provided him with financial information about Trump's net worth.

In April 1995, a Parkesburg politician's epithet-ridden rant against two colleagues prompted a local newspaper article, which in turn generated a defamation suit against the paper that ultimately made national headlines. More than a decade later - after appellate detours that included the U.S. Supreme Court - the case returned to Chester County, where a confidential settlement yesterday ended three days of testimony. Instead of listening to closing arguments on whether the plaintiffs - former Parkesburg Mayor Alan M. Wolfe and former Council President James B. Norton - deserved monetary compensation from the Daily Local News and its staff for damage to their reputations, the jury was dismissed.

Three police officers assigned to Philadelphia International Airport yesterday sued a Fox29 investigative reporter for claiming they allowed a security breach by not manning a post on weekends. The defamation suit, filed in Common Pleas Court, names Jeff Cole and the TV station and alleges the May 24 broadcast report was "outright 'yellow journalism.' " "Defendants concocted their broadcast solely to capitalize on the fear and emotion surrounding the 9/11 Terrorist attacks in an effort to boost their market share and increase their revenues in the month of May, when obtaining such ratings are critical in the news media industry," the complaint says.

Lance Armstrong's defamation trial ended yesterday after charges were withdrawn by Italian cyclist Filippo Simeoni. Armstrong also withdrew his defamation action against Simeoni, the lawyer for the Tour de France great said. Neither cyclist was at the court in Latina, near Rome. "The case is over after both actions have been withdrawn," lawyer Enrico Nan said. Simeoni brought defamation charges against Armstrong following an April 2003 report in the French newspaper Le Monde.

John J. Dougherty, electricians' union leader, city Democratic treasurer, Philadelphia mayoral hopeful, has opened a new front in the political wars that have enveloped him in recent months. But where Dougherty's other recent battles have been behind-the-scenes struggles with fellow Democratic power brokers, the latest engagement comes in the form of a lawsuit pitting his International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98 against ABC affiliate WPVI-TV (Channel 6). In a suit filed yesterday in Common Pleas Court, the union claims it was defamed by a WPVI news report that said federal investigators were pressuring convicted City Councilman Rick Mariano to provide potential information for a probe of Dougherty's relationship with a local electrical contractor.