Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder on Tuesday refiled a lawsuit against the Washington City Paper, seeking $1 million in damages for an article printed six months ago that Snyder said attacks his integrity.
Lawyers for Snyder charge in the suit that the paper and one of its reporters, Dave McKenna, are “engaged in an ongoing campaign” to “smear his business and personal reputation through the publication of false and malicious articles.” Snyder filed the suit in New York in February, but refiled it in Washington Tuesday.
At issue in Snyder’s lawsuit is the November article “The Cranky Redskins Fan’s Guide to Dan Snyder,” a catalog of controversies in which Snyder was involved. Snyder took particular offense to an accompanying photograph of him with drawn-on devil horns that he said was anti-Semitic.
“I am not thin-skinned about personal criticism,” Snyder wrote in an op-ed article printed Tuesday in the Washington Post and headlined “Why I’m suing the City Paper.” He wrote that as the son of a former journalist, he was tolerant of media reports about him no matter how critical. He said he was willing to drop the lawsuit if the newspaper retracted certain statements and apologized.
Snyder’s lawsuit is a nearly point-by-point rebuttal of McKenna’s article, but on Tuesday he focused on one particular claim, that he had been “caught forging names” while running the telemarketing firm Snyder Communications in Florida. Snyder said that was false.
McKenna reported that Snyder’s former marketing company was fined by Florida in 2001 for “slamming,” or illegally changing customers’ telephone service without their authorization. The Florida Attorney General’s office accused Snyder’s company of forging customers’ signatures. Verizon and Snyder’s company settled the case, paying a $2.5 million fine but without admitting wrongdoing, according to the attorney general’s office.
“The … paper said ‘Dan Snyder got caught forging names as a telemarketer,’ and that is absolute untruth,” said Patty Glaser, Snyder’s lawyer.
The paper continues to stand behind McKenna and the story.
Editor Michael Schaffer said he didn’t think anybody reading the story would believe that Snyder was actually down on the front lines committing forgery.
“We would stand by our story if they were to file [suit] in Alaska,” he said. “I hope it will be resolved as fast as possible because I think we have the law on our side.”
Snyder refiled the suit in D.C. Superior Court, in part, so that McKenna could be added as a defendant. The paper’s publisher, Creative Loafing Inc., is also listed in the suit. Atalaya Capital Management, the New York hedge fund that bought the City Paper in 2009, was dropped from the latest suit.
Snyder said that if he wins the $1 million in damages he seeks, he will donate it to help the homeless.
