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Despite Hoax, $33 Million Verdict Stands
In a post here last February, I wrote about how a blogger based in my neck of the Massachusetts woods brought about the exposure of an international hoax with significant legal ramifications. The blogger, Jane Daniel, started her blog, BESTSELLER!, to tell the story in serial form of the lawsuit that resulted in a $33 million verdict against her and her small publishing company Mt. Ivy Press. The 2001 verdict was awarded to Misha Defonseca and her ghostwriter Vera Lee as the result of disputes over copyright and promotion of Defonseca's memoir, Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years. The memoir -- which told how Defonseca survived the Holocaust on her own as a young girl, in part through her "adoption" by a pack of wolves -- became a bestseller in Europe and was the basis for a French movie, Survivre avec les Loups (Surviving With the Wolves).
Daniel's blogging about the case generated new interest in Defonseca and her story. After a genealogist unearthed evidence that appeared to disprove Defonseca's story, Defonseca admitted it was all a hoax. While the revelation had no direct bearing on the verdict, which the Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed in 2005, Daniel believed it provided her with a basis to challenge the original lawsuit. Earlier this year, she brought a lawsuit against Defonseca seeking to overturn the verdict on the grounds that Defonseca's contract with Mt. Ivy Press had warranted the truth of her story.
This week, Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Timothy Feeley threw out Daniel's lawsuit. The judge said that the veracity of the memoir was not an issue in the earlier court battle, which he said was instead about breaches of contract between the authors and the publisher. "Defonseca's fraud, misrepresentations, and misconduct did not go to the heart of the case," he wrote.
Daniel's lawyer, Joseph Orlando of Gloucester, Mass., said he would appeal the ruling.
Meanwhile, Daniel has taken her blog posts about her legal battle and published them in a forthcoming book bearing the same name as her blog, BESTSELLER! Given that the plaintiffs in that original suit are still trying to collect on the verdict, here's hoping Daniel's book is, indeed, a bestseller.
Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on October 14, 2008 at 10:50 AM | Permalink
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