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May 12, 2000/7 Iyar 5760, Vol. 52, No.36
ADL loses $10.5 million defamation suit
CHRIS LEPPEK
Intermountain Jewish News
DENVER - A federal jury has awarded a Colorado couple $10.5 million in their defamation lawsuit against the Colorado chapter of the Anti-Defamation League.
The 12-member jury in U.S. District Court sided with plaintiffs William and Dorothy Quigley of Evergreen, in their defamation lawsuit against the Denver-based Mountain States chapter and its area director, Saul Rosenthal.
The jury on April 28 awarded the Quigleys damages, mostly punitive, of $10.5 million, a figure that astonished defendants and plaintiffs alike in the drawn-out and complex case that began with disputes over dog fights and stolen ornamental plants.
The jury found that several statements made in 1994 by Rosenthal on behalf of the ADL in a press conference and other public statements defamed the Quigleys and resulted in actual and punitive damages.
Rosenthal said the ADL would appeal the decision.
We were shocked and very surprised at the result," Rosenthal said, adding, "I think the overall reaction, within ADL, and from what I'm hearing, in the community, is complete disbelief that this kind of result has taken place."
In Phoenix, outgoing regional board chairman Marc Lieberman said he was outraged by the jury's decision.
"I think it's reprehensible," Lieberman said of the verdict and award. He also suggested the case "would chill advocacy groups."
Denver attorney Jay Horowitz, who represented the Quigleys in the trial, said his clients were gratified at the outcome of the litigation.
"We did not expect a verdict of this size," Horowitz admitted, "although we had the view that if an impartial jury could hear all of the evidence concerning this dispute, the verdict could have been much larger" (than the one actually awarded).
The dispute began in late 1994 when the Quigleys, residents of Jefferson County near Evergreen, were accused by their Jewish neighbors, Mitchell and Candace Aronson, of plotting against their family for reasons of anti-Semitism.
The dispute apparently began over fights between their dogs and allegations of stolen ornamental plants. It intensified into an incident in which Candace Aronson believed that William Quigley intended to run over her with his car.
As the dispute grew more heated, the Aronsons began listening to cordless telephone conversations of the Quigleys which they managed to overhear with a police scanner, and later recorded.
After consulting with the ADL, the Aronsons later told area media of overhearing their neighbors tell crude anti-Semitic jokes and make comments which the Aronsons took to be threats against their family. The Quigleys denied that the threats were ever meant to be serious.
Rosenthal's comments about the Quigleys, made on behalf of the Aronsons after the Denver ADL agreed to state their case publicly, formed the basis of the Quigleys' defamation lawsuit.
Basing their charges on hundreds of hours of recorded telephone conversations of the Quigleys, the Aronsons, and later the ADL, related often-lurid stories of what some believed were ethnic slurs and potential threats.
Some of the comments, repeated over and over in numerous media accounts, shocked members of the Colorado Jewish community. According to transcripts of the tapes, the Quigleys refer to attaching images of oven doors to the Aronsons' house, of burning their children, of wishing their Jewish neighbors had been blown up in a terrorist attack in Israel.
Over the next five years, the case would become a labyrinth of criminal charges filed and later withdrawn, civil lawsuits and counter suits.
Jewish News Senior Editor Chris Garifo contributed to this report.
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