Litigators who helped Dominion Voting Systems score a multimillion-dollar settlement against Fox News led another client to victory this week in what may be one of the largest defamation verdicts in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Megan L. Meier (left) and Daniel Watkins (right) of the defamation law boutique Meier Watkins Phillips Pusch in Washington, D.C., represented the plaintiff, Christopher Chandler, a co-founder of investment company, Legatum, in an $8 million jury verdict—$4 million for both compensatory and punitive damages.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia presided over a week-long trial against private investigator, Donald Berlin, who was held liable for preparing an intelligence report that falsely connected Chandler to the Russian mob.
Meier Watkins worked with Chandler for several years before collaborating on the defamation case, which was originally filed in 2018 following a retraction and apology request.
"We don't just run into court and file these lawsuits," Meier said. "I wrote to the defendants six years ago and asked them to correct the record and apologize. I think, if they had corrected the record and set it straight six years ago, it's hard for me to imagine that we would have brought this lawsuit at all.
"Instead, as we often see, they doubled down. They really backed our client into a corner where he had no choice but to pursue litigation in order to set the record straight and receive compensation for the harm that had been unfairly done to his reputation," she said.
Watkins added that, although winning defamation suits is still an uphill battle due to there being "only a handful of plaintiffs side defamation lawyers in the country," the jury was able to reach the right decision.
"We're in the age of disinformation, and we've been blessed enough to utilize defamation litigation to help battle some of that," Watkins said. "Unfortunately, many times litigation is an inadequate remedy, because the saying is 'a lie is spread all the way around the world before the truth even gets out of bed.'
"It's very clear to us that folks sell lies for money and profit off of it, but this is a great example in which our judicial system held the bad guys accountable," Watkins added.
Full story from Mason Lawlor: https://lnkd.in/gC7na_k8
