Posted on 07/14/2006 10:14:15 AM PDT by Interesting Times
A controversial documentary titled Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal, about Sen. John F. Kerry’s anti-Vietnam War activities in the 1970s that was released just before the 2004 presidential election sparked at least five politically charged lawsuits.
Now there’s only one.
In recent weeks, lawyers for the plaintiffs have dropped three libel suits brought by anti-war veterans who said they were falsely portrayed in the film made by journalist Carlton Sherwood.
Sherwood was also hit with a copyright infringement suit in New York that accused him of unfairly including clips from another film and photos from a book. But that case was dismissed last year.
Now the only remaining suit is a defamation and civil rights suit brought by Sherwood himself against Kerry and his Pennsylvania campaign manager, John Podesta, that accuses them of conspiring to stop the film from being shown.
The lawyer who was defending Sherwood in the libel suits, Robert C. Clothier of Fox Rothschild O’Brien & Frankel, is declaring victory, saying that plaintiff Kenneth Campbell’s sudden decision to drop his two lawsuits came on the eve of a series of depositions of his key witnesses.
“The last-minute withdrawal of the lawsuits on the eve of these depositions suggests a great trepidation about what would come out at the depositions,” Clothier said.
Clothier said that a friend of Campbell’s, Jon Bjornson, had brought a “copycat” suit against Sherwood last summer, but withdrew the suit early this year before any discovery had taken place.
But Campbell’s lawyer, James E. Beasley Jr. of The Beasley Firm, who also represented Bjornson, insisted that the upcoming depositions had nothing to do with Campbell’s decision to drop his claims.
“Tell him [Clothier] don’t flatter himself,” Beasley said when told of Clothier’s remark.
Beasley said in the complaint that the film had defamed Campbell by using “manipulative editing” of footage from the film Winter Soldiers to create the false impression that Campbell and another Vietnam vet had fabricated stories of atrocities.
But Beasley said Campbell decided to drop the suit because he had achieved many of his goals in bringing it by highlighting the controversy and persuading one area theater not to show it.
“At this point, what do we want to go further for? It seemed to be the right time to put a bullet in it,” Beasley said.
But Clothier said he believes Campbell dropped the lawsuits because he knew that the upcoming depositions would assist Sherwood in proving the truth of his film.
Stolen Honor focuses on Kerry and other Vietnam vets who protested the war and claimed that American soldiers were routinely committing war crimes by killing civilians and mistreating prisoners.
The film also focuses on the impact those efforts had on American prisoners of war in Hanoi, who say their treatment was made much worse when their North Vietnamese captors decided that, as war criminals, they were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention.
Clothier said Campbell’s lawsuits “never made any sense.”
In the suits, Clothier said, Campbell claimed that the film defamed him even though he was never identified or mentioned by name.
According to Clothier, the film “merely show(s) him for a few seconds in a 35-year-old film clip asking questions of another man who said he had ‘forgotten’ about wiping out an entire village in Vietnam.”
But Beasley, in the suit, focused on a brief section of the film that, he says, portrayed Campbell in a false light by creating the impression that Campbell’s anti-war efforts, as documented in the film Winter Soldier, were nothing more than false allegations of wartime atrocities.
By showing only a tiny snippet of Winter Soldier, the suit said, Sherwood’s film engaged in “intentionally misleading editing” that left out critical facts showing that Campbell and the man he was speaking with were, in fact, Vietnam vets who “were aware of and/or participated in massacres (other than My Lai), and wished to truthfully show the American people and government the pattern and practice of the U.S. military in Vietnam, as evidenced by firsthand accounts of village massacres and murder in contradiction of international laws and the rules of our military.”
Campbell had filed two suits. The first named Sherwood and his production company, Red White & Blue Productions. The second named Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation and NewsMax.
Now that both of Campbell’s suits have been dropped, Sherwood’s only remaining court battle stemming from the film is his own suit against Kerry and Podesta.
Sherwood, who describes himself in the suit as a Pulitzer Prize- and Peabody Award-winning newspaper and television investigative reporter, contends that the film Stolen Honor tells the story of Kerry’s involvement with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, including the Winter Soldier hearings in Detroit in 1971 and his testimony before Congress.
Attorneys Howard D. Scher, Rudolph Garcia and Thomas P. Manning of Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney set out in the suit to prove that Sherwood’s film truthfully shows that Kerry and others had exaggerated and fabricated allegations of atrocities.
Kerry’s allegations, the suit says, were “concocted by anti-war activists to undermine public support for the war.”
The suit says Kerry knew that testimony in the Winter Soldier hearings was false, and that Kerry “personally pressed ‘witnesses’ to manufacture stories of atrocities that the ‘witnesses’ had neither participated in nor witnessed.”
Sherwood made the film, the suit says, “to explain to the public the sense of betrayal felt by many Vietnam veterans — particularly among former POWs — against Kerry and others who had built their reputations by slandering America’s Vietnam veterans.”
The suit says Sherwood had struck deals to have his 42-minute film shown on 62 television stations owned by the Sinclair Broadcasting Group and in the Baederwood Theater in Abington, Pa.
But the suit says the theater showing was canceled and that Sinclair ultimately aired only a few minutes of the film due to a “coordinated conspiracy” by Kerry, Podesta and others to “discredit and silence Sherwood.”
According to the suit, the Democratic National Committee issued an “action alert” in October 2004 that said Stolen Honor was “written, produced and funded by extreme right-wing activists” and was “false.”
The truth, the suit says, is that the film was written and produced entirely by Sherwood and funded entirely by Pennsylvania veterans.
The suit also quotes an e-mail in which Podesta described Sherwood as a “disgraced former journalist” and “Bush hack” who had “crawled out of the gutter.”
Podesta’s e-mail urged its recipients to contact the Baederwood Theater to insist that the film not be shown.
Sherwood also claims in the suit that Kerry was behind Campbell’s decision to file his defamation suit.
“Campbell was acting at the behest of, and on behalf of, Kerry in filing this lawsuit and in publicly stating that Stolen Honor was false, in an effort to prevent the public from seeing the film,” the suit says.
The suit says Kerry was also behind the copyright lawsuit filed in New York which sought an injunction barring the film from being shown by Sinclair, and that “once the 2004 election had passed,” the plaintiffs in that case “made no further efforts to enforce their purported copyrights, to obtain an injunction, or recover any damages.”
Kerry was also the motivating force, the suit says, behind a letter sent to the Federal Communications Commission by 17 Democratic senators that called for an investigation of Sinclair’s decision to air the film.
“The senators’ letter was intended as pure intimidation,” the suit says. Lawyers for Kerry and Podesta have moved to dismiss Sherwood’s suit, arguing that none of the remarks made by the Kerry campaign were defamatory and that the actions of others, such as filing lawsuits and writing to the FCC, are protected by the Noerr-Pennington doctrine.
Kerry’s lawyers — Paul J. Bschorr, Alan K. Cotler, Shannon Elise McClure, Kevin C. Abbott and Colin E. Wrabley of Reed Smith — argue in their brief that Sherwood’s film had attacked Kerry personally, going so far as to accuse him of war crimes.
Kerry and his supporters, they argue, “did what would be expected in the realm of politics — they fought back and challenged the veracity of the movie and its author.”
Although Sherwood claims he was defamed by Kerry and others, the defense team argues that the Kerry campaign’s response to the film is “squarely within the long-recognized First Amendment protection afforded to such political speech.”
Podesta’s lawyers — Michael N. Onufrak and Thomas A. Warnock of White & Williams — argued in their motion to dismiss that Sherwood and his production company are “public figures” because they “voluntarily injected themselves into a public controversy when they published a documentary discussing opposition to the Vietnam War and attacking a presidential candidate days before the election.”
The suit fails, Onufrak and Warnock argue, because Sherwood cannot show “actual malice” since the alleged defamatory statements “were not made with actual malice but rather in response to plaintiffs’ attack and with the intention of advancing a presidential candidate’s campaign.”
Senior U.S. District Judge John P. Fullam has not yet ruled on the motions to dismiss, but court records show that Sherwood’s lawyers asked the judge on July 10 to take “judicial notice” of the fact that Campbell has now dropped his defamation lawsuits.
In their motion, Sherwood’s lawyers said “Campbell’s voluntary discontinuance is evidence in support of the fact that the suit was objectively baseless.”
The motion also says that the timing of Campbell’s filing of the suit and his recent decision to drop the case is “evidence that the suit was instituted at the behest of and on behalf of [Kerry and Podesta] in order to use the legal process, as opposed to the outcome of that process, to prevent the broadcast and public showing of Stolen Honor.”
"Maybe P(flame) and Joe are planning on a timely withdrawal after the collection plate is passed."
Both don't have paychecks at this time unless $oreA$$ or the Iranian thugs are sending them one.
So you may be correct. A lot of rats have dined and lived well on legal defense funds raise by the idiots who believe their lies.
Nice posts. Thanks...
You are welcome.
Thank you and your peers for helping to prevent Kerry from becoming President.
"Now that both of Campbell’s suits have been dropped, Sherwood’s only remaining court battle stemming from the film is his own suit against Kerry and Podesta."
YAY!
BTTT
Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow... |
It was a pleasure.
Slimey Scumbags
here is a pro vet video you will enjoy
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2487638612433437293&q=Veterans
WHOOHOO!!!
It's good to hear from you again. Drive any flag-colored sports cars lately?
I was waiting for those eyes to fall down, like my mummy.gif.
That is creative
BurntToast.gif ???
That looks wonderful!
Murtha only scammed a Bronze Star
--
Kerry scammed a Bronze Star
- and a Silver Star
with "V" device for "valor in combat"!!!!!!!!
There is no such "V" device on (or for!) any Silver Star except John Forbes Kerry-Kohn's!
The only one in American military history!!
Kerry made up his own "Super Silver Star"!!!
Yes, he did!!
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