Lobbist sues NY Times over allegations of McCain affair

Michael Calderon:

Vikki Iseman, the D.C. lobbyist who was alleged to have an improper relationship with Sen. John McCain in an explosive New York Times story last February, is now suing the paper for $27 million.

Long Island Business News reports that "the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Richmond on Tuesday, alleges the article falsely communicated that Iseman and McCain had an illicit 'romantic' relationship in 1999 when he was chair of the Senate Commerce Committee and she was a lobbyist representing clients before Congress."

Both McCain and Iseman denied any romantic relationship.

Also named in the 36-page suit as defendants are exexcutive editor Bill Keller, Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet, and reporters Jim Rutenberg, David Kirkpatrick, Stephen Labaton and Marilyn Thompson (who's since joined the Washington Post).

...
The suit may raise some interesting issues. Under NY Times v. Sullivan, McCain would have a difficult time recovering because his burden of proof would require him to prove the Times new the allegations were untrue but the printed them anyway. If Iseman can show she was not a public figure, and I think she has a shot at that, then she may just have to show the allegations were untrue.

Proving damages may be a more difficult issue. She is apparetly still working as a lobbyist and there is no indication that her practices has suffered. That leaves her with having to prove she has suffered mentally, emotionally, and/or health health related damages. The defendants will demand to see her health records including mental health records as well as the billing. That could get messy.

The Iseman story was one of several hit pieces on the McCain team including his wife. I suspect that Iseman's lawyers may argue that she was used as a pawn in the Times attempt to help elect Barack Obama by running derrogatory stories about McCain. That could make for a very interesting case.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more