Prominent defense attorney Joseph Tacopina has hit the New York Daily News, two of its reporters and disgraced former police commissioner Bernard Kerik with a $15 million defamation action, alleging the trio schemed in a “clever, but corrupt plan” to have Kerik file a “meritless” disciplinary complaint that would clear the way for the newspaper to publish a libelous article questioning Tacopina’s ethics (See Complaint).
Although reporting statements such as those in the disciplinary complaint are privileged under New York Civil Rights Law §74, which applies to a fair and true report of judicial proceedings, Tacopina’s suit insists the privilege dissolved in a case with “a unique and outrageous set of facts” when journalists Nathaniel Vinton and Michael O’Keeffe allegedly conspired to avoid liability by premising their story on a purportedly bogus grievance they “induced” Kerik to file.
