Judge Slams ADL for Hurting Couple Tarred As 'Anti-Semites'

			By MARC PERELMAN
			FORWARD CORRESPONDENT

UPHOLDING most of a $10 million defamation suit against the Anti-
Defamation League, a federal judge in Denver has lambasted the 
organization for labeling a nasty neighborhood feud as an anti-Semitic 
event.

In upholding the first-ever court defeat handed to the 87-year-old ADL, 
U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham said the organization had endorsed 
and publicized the bigotry accusations of a Jewish couple against its 
neighbors without either investigating the case or weighing the 
consequences.

"Based on its position and history as a well-respected civil-rights
institution, it is not unreasonable to infer that public charges of
anti-Semitism leveled by the ADL will be taken seriously and assumed by 
many to be true without question," the judge wrote on March 31 in a 46-
page order and memorandum of decision obtained by the Forward. "In that 
respect, the ADL is in a unique position of being able to cause 
substantial harm to individuals when it lends its backing to allegations 
of anti-Semitism."

The judge's opinion confirmed a verdict reached last April by a federal
jury, which essentially accused the Denver chapter of the ADL and its
regional representative, Saul Rosenthal, of falsely portraying William and
Dorothy Quigley as anti-Semites. Mr. Quigley, an executive of the United
Artists theater chain, said his career in the "predominantly Jewish and
close-knit" film business had stalled after the incident.

"The ADL seized an opportunity to aggrandize itself as the defender of the
Jews by unjustly accusing a middle-class couple of being anti-Semitic
crooks," said Jay Horowitz, the Quigleys' Denver-based lawyer. "And all
along, they showed an unbelievable arrogance."

At the same time, the judge reduced last year's judgment by some $675,000,
cutting the punitive damages awarded to Mrs. Quigley under state law and
reducing the Quigleys' compensatory damages to reflect money they received
in an earlier settlement with opposing lawyers.

The ADL said it would appeal the decision to the 10th Circuit Court of
Appeals in Denver later this spring. The ADL's law firm, Long and Jaudon,
claimed in a statement issued by the ADL last week that "there were
reversible errors made during both pretrial and trial proceedings." Both 
the ADL and attorney Joe Jaudon refused to comment further.

What is not in dispute is that the ADL, after springing to the defense of 
a Jewish couple essentially seeking to strengthen their hand in a private
dispute, now finds itself entangled in an embarrassing and potentially
costly legal stew. The league's annual budget hovers around $50 million. 

The judgment could harm its reputation as an aggressive but reliable 
monitor of anti-Semitism.

The ruling comes at a time when the ADL is also embroiled in the Marc Rich
pardon scandal. The organization said it received some $250,000 in the past 15 years from the fugitive financier who received a controversial 
11th-hour pardon from President Clinton. The league's national director, 
Abraham Foxman, declared last month that he "probably" had made a mistake 
in writing a letter to Mr. Clinton supporting the Rich pardon.

All this was not lost on Mr. Horowitz, the Denver attorney.
"Can you imagine an organization using money from Marc Rich, a guy who 
made millions dealing with anti-Semitic countries like Iran, attacking 
powerless people for some alleged anti-Semitic slurs?" he said.

The Denver dispute began in August 1994, when Mitchell and Candice Aronson
moved to the affluent suburb of Evergreen, Colo. The couple was initially
befriended by the Quigleys, their neighbors, but relations quickly began 
to sour, escalating from complaints about dogs and stolen plants to an
allegation by Mrs. Aronson that Mr. Quigley tried to run her over with his
car.

The Aronsons contacted the ADL on October 21, after concluding that the
Quigleys were plotting to drive them out of the neighborhood because they
were Jewish. The suspicions were based partly on a conversation on the
Quigleys' cordless phone, which the Aronsons claimed they inadvertently
overheard through their police scanner. They said they heard the Quigleys
talking about sticking pictures of oven doors on their house, burning 
their children and wishing they had been blown up in a terrorist attack in 
Israel.

The ADL, after consulting with the district attorney, suggested that the
Aronsons tape another six weeks' worth of conversations. None of the 
parties reportedly knew that Congress had outlawed such wiretaps on 
October 25.

In December, the Aronsons filed a federal suit against the Quigleys,
accusing them of ethnic intimidation and violation of their civil rights.
The following day, at a press conference, Mr. Rosenthal of the ADL labeled
the Quigleys anti-Semitic and said they were planning attacks against the
Aronsons. The district attorney's office also filed felony criminal 
charges of ethnic intimidation.

At that point, the case began to unravel. The Quigleys accused the 
Aronsons of waging a smear campaign against them. In January 1996, they 
sued the Aronsons and the ADL for violating their rights under the Federal 
Wiretap Act.

In the meantime, the district attorney, who realized that the tapes were
illegal, dropped the ethnic intimidation charge and agreed to pay
compensation to the Quigleys. In February 1998, an out-of-court settlement
was reached between the couples. But the settlement did not include Mr.
Rosenthal and the ADL.

Mr. Horowitz said he tried to settle numerous times with the ADL, but was
rebuffed.

The Quigleys accused the ADL of libel, false light invasion of privacy,
invasion of privacy and violation of the Federal Wiretap Act. In April 
2000, a jury accepted nearly all the charges and awarded them $10.5 
million in damages, one of the largest defamation awards ever in Colorado.

In reply, the ADL and Mr. Rosenthal called for a reduction of the 
judgment, or a new trial.

Judge Nottingham, ruling on the ADL's motion to overturn the verdict,
accepted none of the league's arguments. He pointed to evidence that Mr.
Rosenthal and the ADL had not bothered to listen to the tapes, read the
transcripts or investigate in-depth before publicly leveling the charge of
anti-Semitism. He criticized what he called the selection of isolated
comments from thousands of pages of transcripts to build the anti-Semitism
accusation "in what could otherwise be regarded as mere sarcastic, banal 
and tasteless remarks uttered in a garden-variety dispute among 
neighbors."

To support his argument, the judge cited an internal ADL memorandum 
written by Mr. Rosenthal in January 1995, in which the league official 
said he wanted "to be sure we are maximizing all opportunities that are 
available from the Aronson case and arrests.... In short, 'make hay while 
the sun shines' - graciously of course."

Mr. Quigley, a New York native, was a chief financial officer at Paramount
pictures and president of Vestron Pictures. There he produced the movies
"Dirty Dancing" and "The Dead." He moved to Denver in 1993 to head the
United Artists' theater chain in the region.

As a result of the anti-Semitism charge, said his attorney of Mr. 
Horowitz, "He has become a pariah in the business."

The judge concurred, repeatedly underlining what he called the 
"catastrophic impact" of the accusations on Mr. Quigley's career. He said 
the issue was actually raised in discussions within the Denver ADL. "In 
that respect, Rosenthal's conduct could be perceived as even more 
egregious, given his awareness of the stigmatizing consequences attached 
to accusations of anti-Semitism."

Regarding the large damage award, the judge wrote that "it will, at a
minimum, provide a deterrent effect against the ADL from engaging in 
future conduct involving the use of intercepted telephone conversations to 
pursue a civil lawsuit against persons perceived to be anti-Semitic."

(c) 2001 The Forward