A newspaper owner received $8 million in a verdict against a Yonkers mayor who objected to articles alleging he hung out in strip joints and got a lap dance from “Sassy.” The mayor raided the news stacks to prevent the newspaper’s distribution. -db
The Journal News
October 14, 2010
By Timothy O’Connor
A federal jury Wednesday socked Yonkers Mayor Philip Amicone with an $8 million verdict for wrongly seizing news racks and copies of the Westchester Guardian after the paper ran articles and headlines sharply critical of the mayor.
The same jury also ruled the paper did not defame Amicone when it ran an article on the eve of the 2007 mayoral election that said Amicone frequented strip joints and had gotten a lap dance from a stripper named Sassy.
The paper’s owner, Sam Zherka, who also owns the strip club where Amicone is alleged to have received the lap dance, said the Yonkers mayor had wrongly forced city taxpayers to foot the legal bill to carry out the defamation lawsuit.
“He cheated the people of the City of Yonkers just like he stiffed Sassy by not giving her the $20 for the lap dance,” he said after the verdict.
Zherka said he intends to hire lawyers to “chase Amicone to the ends of the Earth” to get the $8 million that was awarded to 17 employees and readers of the Guardian who sued Amicone and the city. They claimed in their lawsuits that Amicone had denied them their First Amendment right to free expression by confiscating the newspapers and news racks in the summer of 2007.
The lawsuits said the news racks were picked up by city public works employees, and police officers began ticketing Guardian employees who were handing out the paper on city streets.
Zherka said that only began after the paper began running articles and headlines such as the one that labeled then-Mount Vernon Mayor Ernest Davis “dumb” and Amicone “dumber.”
Former Guardian Editor Richard Blassberg, who like the other 15 plaintiffs was awarded $470,588.20 in punitive damages against Amicone, said the verdict was a triumph for the First Amendment.
“I’m humbled and grateful to this jury for their diligence in performing their duty and their respect for the First Amendment,” he said.
A spokesman for Amicone said last night that the mayor would receive details of the verdict in a Friday briefing from the city’s lawyers.
“Obviously, we’re very disappointed in the jury’s verdict,” David Simpson said, declining further comment on the jury’s findings.
He said the mayor still believes he was defamed by the paper.
“It’s right there in black and white,” he said. “They printed things that, as it came out at trial, were blatantly untrue.”
The jury of four men and four women deliberated in White Plains for nearly 10 hours over two days before reaching its verdict.
That followed on the heels of a weeklong trial before U.S. District Judge Cathy Seibel that featured testimony from Amicone, Zherka and Blassberg.
Amicone said not only did he not go to Zherka’s club in Manhattan, V.I.P., but that he had never been to a strip club in his life.
He denied ever receiving a lap dance from anyone.
Zherka said the mayor came to the strip club a few weeks after attending a banquet at the Lake Isle Country Club in Eastchester, where the mayor spoke glowingly of Zherka and gave him an integrity award.
Zherka said the two men exchanged phone numbers at the banquet and he invited Amicone to his strip club.
Amicone denied publicly saying anything laudatory about Zherka or giving him an award. He said he only briefly met Zherka at the dinner and spoke to him for about two minutes.
On Nov. 1, 2007, the paper published an article penned by Blassberg that accused the mayor of being a hypocrite who frequented strip clubs and received a lap dance.
That article endorsed Amicone’s opponent in the mayoral election, Dennis Robertson, and came five months after Zherka said his news racks and papers started disappearing in Yonkers.
Zherka said the jury’s verdict was a warning to other politicians.
“If they violate anyone’s constitutional rights, there is a heavy, heavy price to pay,” he said.
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