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NY Lawyer's $35 Million Defamation Suit Dismissed By John Caher A unanimous appellate panel has dismissed a $35 million libel action filed by an attorney who claimed he was defamed by the Albany Times Union. Arnold W. Proskin, a well-known Upstate figure, sued the paper over a 2002 story on a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The federal court criticized Mr. Proskin's representation of a criminal defendant whose conviction was overturned for ineffective assistance of counsel. The article reported that Mr. Proskin's political career —— he is a former assemblyman, Albany County judge and district attorney —— ended in 1994 over a controversy regarding his handling of an elderly client's will. Mr. Proskin's "political career fizzled after public revelations that he altered a client's will to leave $49,000 of the elderly woman's money to his own children," the article stated. The statement prompted Mr. Proskin to sue the newspaper for libel, claiming that it accused him of committing a felony. Mr. Proskin has always maintained that he changed the will on the orders of his client. The Appellate Division, Third Department, ruled last week in Proskin v. Hearst Corp., 96303, that the article never accused the lawyer of perpetrating a criminal act. "Nowhere in the article did defendants state that plaintiff did anything illegal, felonious or criminal," Justice Anthony T. Kane wrote for the court. "While [Mr. Proskin] contends that the language employed in the article implied that he modified the will illegally, surreptitiously or without authority from his client, innuendo or adverse inferences are not enough to establish that the statement was false." The court said common dictionaries and thesauruses "list 'alter' interchangeable with modify and change, and plaintiff undeniably modified or change[d] his client's will, albeit with her permission and at her direction." It said in affirming Albany Supreme Court Justice Joseph R. Cannizzaro that the statement in the Times Union article was true, and therefore the newspaper is entitled to an absolute defense. Joining Justice Kane on the panel were Justices Karen K. Peters, Carl J. Mugglin and John A. Lahtinen. |
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A Feast
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