UPDATE: More thoughts on this below the fold.
Shay Totten has the story tonight. Earlier today Shay posted a diary that David Blittersdorf had sent Brian Dubie a letter demanding that he retract allegations that Blittersdorf
Tonight there's more. Shay Totten is now reporting that Blittersdorf has sued Dubie for defamation. Totten links to the complaint filed in Chittenden Superior Court alleging that
Blittersdorf is represented by Ritchie Berger, known in the legal community as one of Vermont's best trial lawyers (he's good). Don't expect Berger to shrink from a fight.
In almost thirty years of living and observing and participating in politics in Vermont, I've never seen anything like this. Anything that anyone has said so far about Dubie running a dirty, negative campaign pales in comparison to this latest revelation.
In the opinion of this reporter, it's hard to see how Dubie can salvage his previous “nice guy” image. Even if he thought the attacks on Shumlin and Blittersdorf were justified, did he really need to open himself up to fighting a two-front war? Would he have been better off making a retraction?
I guess we'll know Wednesday morning.
There are a couple of other points that seem interesting.
1. The defendants in this case are not just Dubie himself, but his campaign group, Friends of Brian Dubie, and Corry Bliss. I've never seen a campaign manager's contract. Does anyone know if they typically provide that the campaign will cover your libel judgments for you?
2. Remember when the whole state was up in arms about the UVM hockey hazing scandal? And everyone was on the side of the students and against the hockey program? Ritchie Berger was the lawyer for UVM who dismantled the case against the university.
3. The complaint alleges that Dubie made his statements kowing that they were false, or with reckless disregard of whether they were true or false. This is the standard the Supreme Court adopted in New York Times v. Sullivan for libel suits by a public figure.
4. The complaint includes a claim for punitive damages.
5. Dubie's people continue to try to spin this, quoting Corry Bliss as saying:
We eagerly anticipate a lengthy discovery process and the opportunity to put Peter Shumlin under oath so he can finally answer questions about his unethical behavior.”
I have to wonder how much he'll be saying that if he's got this libel case hanging over his head for a couple of years after he's left Vermont and tried to catch on with another right-winger's campaign.
Dubie’s got to be running scared about this. I’ve heard a few things through the grapevine, which we can take with a grain of salt, but the fact remains he’s losing control of the narrative with just a few days left when the undecideds are deciding. Could this be the October Surprise?
His own damned fault, too, on this and abortion. He allowed these things to become issues by playing cyncial, destructive politics and not showing the courage of his convictions by just laying out his case for himself. Avoiding questions, making personal attacks on a businessperson who is investing in our future and played by the rules…not just ugly, but dumb politics.
(or willingness) to administer the “smell test” to every new charge that is hurled at them. Messenger Editor, Emerson Lynn punts the blame for his inflammatory editorial re: Bittersdorf to the Free Press, whose coverage of the story preceded the Messenger editorial, overlooking his own journalistic obligation to check the facts independently. This wasn’t a story coming out of Sri Lanka via the AP. and sources to check the validity of the story were readily at hand.
. . . Just ask the Burlington Free Press. Berger represented former Free Press reporter Paul Teetor in his wrongful-termination lawsuit against the newspaper.
You remember Teetor: An award-winning reporter at the Free Press, Teetor was covering a local forum on racism. A young white woman tried to speak and was told by the moderator, a mayoral aide, that only “people of color” are allowed to speak.
Teetor agreed with the woman that this was “reverse racism” and said so in his next-day news story. The mayoral aide announced he would organize a march on the Free Press if Teetor wasn’t fired. The Free Press indeed fired Teetor, in a meeting at which he has no chance to defend himself.
Teetor promptly filed a wrongful-termination lawsuit against the Free Press and its parent company, Gannett, Inc. In the ensuing trial, Berger, Teetor’s attorney, brought out the fact that the editor who fired Teetor was under pressure from Gannett to improve his “mainstreaming” scores.
The term refers to a program where editors at all 94 Gannett-owned newspapers were supposed to meet a variety of racial targets in hiring, in the use of sources and in positive news coverage — a policy that was most evident at Gannett’s flagship national paper, USA Today.
But because Vermont is the second-whitest state in the nation (after Maine) — with a population that is 97 percent white, according to the Census Bureau — Gannett’s “mainstreaming” edict proved impossible for the Free Press to comply.
Ultimately, Teetor and the Free Press reached an out-of-court settlement. Teetor now works for LA Weekly in Los Angeles.
So if I were Brian Dubie, I would immediately seek an out-of-court settlement with Blittersdorf, for there’s no telling what kind of dirt Berger is likely to find against the Dubie campaign during the discovery process.