A former insurance executive is suing former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer for a column in Slate.com on an insurance bid-rigging scandal that said the man was guilt of crimes. In fact, the executive’s conviction was thrown out of court before the column was published.
The executive, William Gilman, said Spitzer was acting out of “actual malice” and that even if Spitzer never used his name, he was easily identified as the one in the libelous remarks. The complaint read, “Marsh’s [the insurance company’s] behavior was a blatant abuse of law and market power: price-fixing, bid-rigging and kickbacks all designed to harm their customers and the market while Marsh and its employees pocketed the increased fees and kickbacks.” -db
From Reuters, August 22, 2011, by Jonathan Stempel.