House Minority Leader initiates suit against newspaper
State House Minority Leader H. William DeWeese (D-Waynesburg) has initiated a civil lawsuit against the Herald-Standard. DeWeese’s staff wouldn’t comment on the matter, directing questions about the suit to the Philadelphia law firm of Sprague and Sprague.
Jeoff Johnson, an attorney with that law firm, said the suit will charge the newspaper with libel, based on articles published over the last year, and request a jury trial. He said the jury will be asked to decide the amount of damages to which DeWeese is entitled.
Johnson said the newspaper published “false, malicious and defamatory” articles that resulted in unspecified damages to the longtime legislator. “Libel based on publications by the Herald-Standard which are false, malicious and defamatory,” Johnson said.
“False statements and statements you knew were false and you repeated those statements time after time after time knowing they were false. That’s the basis of the suit.”
Attorney C. Robert McCall of Waynesburg filed the request in Fayette County Court, asking Prothonotary Lance Winterhalter to issue a writ of summons naming the paper, Editor Michael C. Ellis, parent company Calkins Media Inc. and five John Does as defendants.
Ellis declined comment on the suit.
Johnson said the John Does are the authors of articles that were published without bylines, and the writers will be identified during the pre-trial discovery process.
Every day for 353 days until May 22 – the day after the primary election in which DeWeese soundly defeated his Democratic opponents – the Herald-Standard printed a caricature of DeWeese and a sentence or two saying that he broke a promise he made to the paper’s editorial board during a meeting in the fall of 2000.
The board said DeWeese agreed to provide receipts showing how he spends or allocates the $11 million Special Leadership Account that he receives annually as the leader of the Democratic Party in the state House of Representatives. DeWeese’s Republican counterpart also receives a leadership fund.
An excerpt from an editorial that accompanied the caricature on May 22 read: “Today, 12 days shy of a year, we will retire the DeWeese caricature. From the outset, the editorial board agreed to run it until either DeWeese honored his word or until he stood for re-election. It was never a win or lose campaign. The purpose of the cartoon was not to cause DeWeese to lose an election. That’s up to the voters. Always has been. Always will be.
“The cartoon was a device, a tool to prevent the issue from fading from the public view, and to boost the question of open, honest government to top priority. We believe it served that purpose exceedingly well.”
Johnson would not say if the caricatures will be cited in the suit or how the legislator was harmed, despite his overwhelming primary victory in May.
He did say the firm will prove that the newspaper damaged DeWeese.
“We will establish how he was damaged in the suit,” Johnson said “We will demonstrate very clearly the damages. There’s very tangible evidence.”
Johnson also said that courts in the United States have established that both compensatory and punitive financial damages are the only remedy available in cases of defamation through either libel or slander.
Libel is the publication of false information that injures a person’s reputation. When public officials bring such suits they must prove malice, which means the paper knew the information was false or published it with reckless disregard about whether it was true or false.
Beginning on the day the Herald-Standard is served with the writ, DeWeese and his attorneys will have 30 days to file their complaint at the courthouse.
The law also provides him with two years, beginning on the date he alleges he was wronged, to file a suit.