After losing a hotly contested battle in the Democratic primary election for the U.S. Senate, a Florida businessman is preparing a lawsuit against the St. Petersburg Times and The Miami Herald charging they libeled him in reporting his business activities which cost him the election. -db
The New York Times
August 31, 2010
By Jeremy W. Peters
Jeff Greene, a Florida real estate developer who lost one of the year’s most bitter and closely watched primary elections, is preparing to sue The St. Petersburg Times and The Miami Herald for libel, claiming that articles they published cost him his bid for the United States Senate.
Mr. Greene lost the Democratic primary last week to Kendrick B. Meek, who will face Gov. Charlie Crist, an independent, and Marco Rubio, a Republican, in November.
A libel suit is a rare step for a political figure. While many candidates complain about unfair news coverage, few go as far as making their complaints a legal case. But Mr. Greene, who has deep pockets and apparently the wherewithal to pursue the case all the way to trial, has proved he is no ordinary politician.
Dogged by rumors about wild parties aboard his 145-foot yacht and about fraudulent real estate deals, Mr. Greene will seek at least $500 million in damages in part, he said, to teach the news media a lesson. “I want to send a message to every newspaper in the country: Do your homework,” he said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “I deserve to have the record corrected, and they deserve to be punished.”
He has hired L. Lin Wood, a prominent libel lawyer who has won settlements for other public figures who claimed they were defamed by the news media, including Richard A. Jewell, the security guard cleared as a suspect in the 1996 Olympics bombing in Atlanta. Mr. Wood said he expected to file a formal complaint in state court in Miami-Dade County on Wednesday.
At issue are two news articles written by St. Petersburg Times reporters that were printed in both The Times and The Herald, and a Times editorial urging a federal investigation into Mr. Greene’s business activities.
Neil Brown, the editor of The Times, defended the paper’s articles. “The Times’ coverage of Mr. Greene and his business transactions has been thorough and fair, and the reporting is well-documented in public records,” he wrote in an e-mail.
Anders Gyllenhaal, executive editor of The Herald, declined to comment.
In one article, The Times reported that Mr. Greene was party to a real estate deal that left 300 California families homeless and a partner of his in jail. The other left the impression that the boxer Mike Tyson, who was the best man at Mr. Greene’s wedding, used drugs while on Mr. Greene’s yacht. The paper later ran a front-page correction clarifying that Mr. Tyson said he had not used drugs on the yacht.
Even with an admission of error, a libel case can be hard to prove. Sandra S. Baron, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center, said, “Jeff Greene is going to have to prove that the articles were published with actual malice.”
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