CBS’s motion to dismiss Dan Rather’s $70 million wrongful-termination suit was denied. The anchorman will be allowed to proceed with his claim that he had been made a scapegoat for the network’s production of a piece about Bush the Younger’s military service, which ultimately turned out to be discredited.
After the jump, the lawyers on the suit, and a former lawyer who deserves consideration as potentially being the “worst client in the world” (but in our view is pretty freaking cool).
Martin Gold (Amherst BA ‘58, Columbia JD ‘61) of Sonnenschein represents Rather. He was pretty happy with the decision.
“They saw their best interest was to abandon the story whether it was accurate or not and to get rid of Dan Rather,” he said. “That’s what this case is about.”
James Quinn (Notre Dame BA ‘67, Fordham LLB ‘71), co-head of Weil Gotshal’s litigation practice, represents CBS. He wasn’t too optimistic about the summary-judgment motion. According to Reuters, he
had expected Gammerman to keep the case alive. “If we have to go to trial, we’re ready,” he said after the hearing.
Judge Ira Gammerman also ruled that Sumner Redstone would have to testify – and apparently Quinn’s objection to the deposition was that Redstone wouldn’t remember anything.
THR, Esq. focused on Redstone’s role in the imbroglio. Redstone is chairman of both Viacom and CBS Corp., and is one of the particular objects of Rather’s wrath. Rather claims that Redstone was the driving force behind the firing decision. Having considered Britney Spears, Mike Tyson, and Courtney Love for the honor, THR, Esq. throws Redstone out there as possibly the worst client in the world. Why?
Nothing could be scarier for a lawyer than coaching an 86-year-old loose-canon billionaire through testimony that could potentially lose his company millions of dollars.
We’ve actually had the pleasure of spending a bit of time with Redstone some years ago, so we’ll politely disagree. He’s more in the “crazy like a fox” mold than loose-cannon. Redstone is actually one of us:
After receiving his LL.B. degree in 1947 [from Harvard], Redstone clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco and, during evening hours, taught classes in labor-management law at the University of San Francisco. In less than a year he was called to Washington, D.C., by the Truman administration to work for the Justice Department as special assistant to U.S. Attorney General Tom C. Clark, working mainly in tax litigation. Redstone decided to leave government service in 1951 and, though not yet thirty years old, was invited to join the Washington law practice of several former senior Justice Department colleagues who had taken notice of him. While with Ford, Bergson, Adams, Borkland & Redstone, he successfully argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that effectively ended the Internal Revenue Service practice of charging citizens with criminal tax evasion based on no other evidence than sudden large increases in personal net worth, forcing the IRS to present specific evidence.
From there, he went on to turn the family’s chain of drive-in theaters into a massive media conglomerate (taking an initial paycut from $100,000 to $5,000 pa, supposedly).
Oh, and he also nearly died in a fire, which he only survived by holding on to the window sill despite flames burning his hand and face. That resulted in 60 hours of surgery and he overcame the doctors’ expectations that he’d never walk/play tennis/etc. again.
Related posts:
This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.