Does the Truth Matter?
Gail McCarthy has an excellent piece in today's Gloucester Times about the hearing in the Daniel vs. Lee/Defonseca case. You can read it here.
Joe Orlando, Misha Defonseca and Vera Lee's lawyer in court yesterday.Basically what Judge Freeley has to decide is does it matter that Misha lied about her life and passed it off as truth? Does it matter that she perjured her testimony from the very beginning? And does it matter that her contract, the contract that was the basis of her lawsuit against Jane Daniel, was void from the outset because in it she verified that her story was true? In other words, is it okay for a person to concoct an elaborate lie to con someone into backing them into writing a book and then turn around and lie in court in order to sue them for everything they have?
That's all the judge has to decide...
(Now I really am taking some time off --- see you next week.)
Thanks for reading.
posted by Kathleen Valentine at 7:29 AM
2 Comment:
(Cross posted from my comment to the GDT article)
I attended the hearing and I think a huge point that was completely overlooked was that the fact that Misha Defonseca represented herself as a Holocaust survivor in the original trial was extremely prejudicial. She was portrayed herself as a poor woman in financial distress being cheated by her publisher, Jane Daniel. Ms. Daniel was vilified for her business practices--leading to an unbelievable settlement.
I believe the judgement for Vera Lee was influence by this vilification tactic (Frank Frisoli is an extremely acerbic litigator)-- that if Daniel would cheat this poor old Jewish woman, then she must be guilty of cheating Lee. But the whole premise of Defonseca was a lie that she admitted to this February--she wasn't in financial distress and she had been telling this lie to Jewish groups for years.
Daniel deserves justice here, and Defonseca deserves to go to jail for her reprehensible perjury and should be publicly vilified as a fake Holocaust survivor (she's not even Jewish). The Jewish community won't comment on this issue--they once supported Defonseca, but were badly fooled and are terribly embarrassed. They are not quick to admit that snookered by this woman and wish it would go away.
The Massachusetts Superior Court rendered a verdict based on a lie--one that was only proven in February. The grief imposed on Ms. Daniel for the last 10 years, the loss of income, her business, inheritance, her incarceration for non-payment of a settlement that should have never happened and the threat of her home and livelihood being sold from beneath her demands justice. This is what the legislature had in mind in statute 60B6, the injustice imposed on Ms. Daniel due to the fraud of Defonseca should be rectified. I hope to God Ms. Daniel prevails and Defonseca is brought to justice.
law and justice all too often do not seem to coincide. It's scary. It seems like judgments have no relation to common sense. DeFonseca and Lee - they seem so rapacious, as well as being rank amateurs (as well as being out-and-out liars.) I hope Ms. Daniels has a better lawyer than she did the first time around. She deserves better counsel than she's had so far.
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