No cube, stated N.Y. Civil Court docket decide A. Ally Shahabuddeen on Friday, in Travis v. Each day Mail:
Defendants … are alleged by plaintiff to have defamed her in the middle of its ongoing protection of former Governor Eliot Spitzer. As has been extremely publicized by quite a few media publications over the course of the final a number of years, the previous Governor turned embroiled in a collection of scandals arising from claims that he recurrently engaged escort companies, and later, allegations of sexual assault perpetrated towards plaintiff.
Of relevance to this motion is the outline of plaintiff as a “prostitute” in an article printed by the Each day Mail on January 24, 2022, entitled Former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer used alias, ‘George Fox’ on the hospital when he checked in on 25-year-old Russian prostitute lover he was accused of choking in $1,000-a-night Plaza lodge room in 2016. Plaintiff contends that opposite to the Each day Mail‘s protection, she has by no means engaged in prostitution or related occupation and that her involvement with former Governor Spitzer was restricted to a authorized dispute over the alleged sexual assault….
[D]efendants have offered an article printed October 7, 2014 on the net outlet Medium. Entitled Intercourse is Intercourse, however Cash is Cash and beneath the byline “Svetlana Z.,” the piece describes intimately the approach to life and experiences of a high-end escort instructed from a first-person perspective. The writer biography describes Svetlana Z. as “a 24-year-old former escort dwelling in New York Metropolis,” and likewise contend based mostly upon the reporting of one other media outlet and overview of courtroom data that plaintiff was evicted from her condo on Lexington Avenue in 2015 for partaking in prostitution.
Defendants spotlight the lengthy historical past of protection, by itself and different information retailers, of the previous Governor’s alleged improprieties and his connection to plaintiff, together with articles from DNAInfo.com, the New York Put up, and the New York Occasions. One such article, printed on December 20, 2018 by the New York Put up, experiences on an “unique interview” with plaintiff wherein she discusses her escort work and describes her relationship with former Governor Spitzer. Defendants additionally offered examples of the Each day Mail‘s personal protection of the previous Governor’s relationship with plaintiff from way back to 2014. Collectively, defendants argue, these displays reveal that plaintiff can be unable to determine the falsity of the statements at difficulty or that they have been made with defendant’s information or disregard of their possible falsity.
In her opposition, plaintiff doesn’t deny authoring the Medium article nor does she deny creating the web sites and on-line listings. She as an alternative asserts that her printed work and different accounts describing life as an escort have been a part of an effort to construct a profession in writing and have been fully fictional. As for the web sites and different web ads cited by defendants, she claims that they have been produced for the aim of satisfying Medium’s “fact-checking” necessities and probably selling a future fictional net collection on the subject.
Plaintiff does deny that she was ever evicted from her condo for prostitution, averring that throughout the related time interval her pal lived on the condo rented beneath plaintiff’s identify. It was that pal, plaintiff contends, who condo administration sought to oust after she rejected advances from the constructing superintendent. Plaintiff additional asserts that it was unattainable for plaintiff to have been partaking in prostitution within the condo as a result of she was touring or dwelling elsewhere throughout the related time interval. Supporting paperwork submitted by plaintiff embrace a letter from Steve Friedman, plaintiff’s “ghostwriter,” who attests to separate of the proceeds for the Medium article and the overall means of “ghostwriting”; a letter from the administration at 776 Avenue of the Americas confirming that plaintiff’s pal was a resident there from 2013 to 2016; and an order affirmation document from Tiffany & Co. regarding a $3,000 set of diamond earrings billed to “Mr. Eliot Spitzer” and to be shipped to “Svetlana Travis” on the Avenue of the Americas condo dated January 21, 2015….
Plaintiff’s declare of fabric falsity rests on her rivalry that the Medium piece, on-line ads, and opinions have been all a part of an elaborate fiction with which she hoped to start out a writing profession. Nevertheless, taking the sheer breadth of her on-line presence mixed with corroboration from a number of media sources and plaintiff’s personal statements, her place strains credulity. Additional, as defendants observe, courts have routinely accepted {that a} assertion made by the plaintiff herself could also be accepted for its substantial reality.
Plaintiff’s displays don’t carry her burden to point out falsity. Plaintiff’s account of the standing of the condo at 776 Avenue of the Americas isn’t significantly probative of the standing of the Lexington Avenue condo, and a receipt for an costly reward from former Governor Spitzer merely corroborates a portion of her account printed within the New York Put up. Lastly, the letter from Steve Friedman, the “ghostwriter,” doesn’t point out that her story was fabricated. Quite, the letter units forth the usual ghostwriting protocol, consisting of interviewing the topic (on this case, plaintiff), and accumulating the tales from the interview right into a publishable format (on this case, an essay). Nowhere does he state that he believed her account was fully fictional, merely that “it could not shock” him if it got here to gentle that the account had inaccuracies. This alone isn’t ample to hold plaintiff’s burden to determine that defendants’ statements are materially false.
In any occasion, whether or not her present account of occasions is true is finally irrelevant as a result of it stays that plaintiff can not reveal that defendants acted with precise malice [the standard required in all public-concern cases under New York law -EV]…. [N]othing in plaintiff’s papers establishes a foundation for believing that defendants both knew that the statements have been false or acted in reckless disregard for whether or not they have been false.
The Medium piece is written from a first-person perspective and presents as a truthful account, and at no level within the piece or the credit following it’s there a sign to the reader that the account is fictional. The piece itself alerts precisely the other, because the contributor credit state to the reader that it was fact-checked by the workers and the writer is explicitly described as a “former escort.” Certainly, it’s tough to fault a reporter who, in search of to confirm an account of escort work, involves imagine within the account’s veracity based mostly on web sites, on-line ads, and a overview web site entry resembling exactly what’s described within the account. Plaintiff has introduced nothing in her papers that may give such a reporter cause to doubt that the account is true.
Additional weighing towards plaintiff is the extent to which plaintiff’s standing as an escort was referenced within the reporting of different information organizations. Of specific word is the unique interview printed by the New York Put up, which instantly experiences plaintiff’s personal statements admitting to her work as an escort and to her relationship with former Governor Spitzer. Taken together with the truth that defendants have been publishing articles referencing plaintiff’s escort work from way back to 2014 with out opposition till very lately, there isn’t a foundation to help the declare that defendants knew or recklessly disregarded the likelihood that plaintiff was mendacity.
The courtroom additionally rejected Travis’s request to seal courtroom data:
[P]laintiff claims that failure to seal courtroom data has a excessive likelihood of inflicting hurt to a 3rd celebration, who had beforehand “gone via stalking, harassment, and sexual trafficking.” Nevertheless, plaintiff by no means specifies this particular person by identify neither is this third celebration in any other case important to this motion, at the very least to any extent discernable by the Court docket. Plaintiff has not offered ample info to beat the general public coverage of preserving open entry to courtroom data, and her request to seal is due to this fact denied.
