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After Publicly Demanding His Accusers Sue Him, Dershowitz Is Arguing That His Accusers Have No Basis To Sue Him

Catching up on the latest filings in this saga.

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(Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images for Hulu)

On March 2, 2019, Alan Dershowitz said that his “accusers are Virginia Roberts and Sarah Ransome… I hereby accuse my false accusers of committing the felony of perjury and challenge them to sue me for defamation.” Most plain readings of this statement assumed he was daring them to put their facts on the table so he could disprove them. Apparently, what he actually wanted was to make a technical argument about the statute of limitations time-barring their claims.

After a detour into a motion to disqualify Virginia Roberts Guiffre’s counsel, Dershowitz has moved to dismiss the defamation claims.

On the one hand, it’s unfair to assume someone should waive an opportunity to squelch a lawsuit out of the gate when they think there’s a good faith motion to dismiss. On the other hand, at some point you have to put your money where your mouth is when you’re publicly calling on people to sue you so you can prove they’re wrong. Do you want your day in court or not?

So the primary argument Dershowitz offers for bouncing this case is that despite making a number of recent statements — including the explicit claim quoted above — Dershowitz says he’s been calling her a liar for years so the claim is time-barred because everything he’s saying now is part of the same “publication” from when he went on TV in 2015.

New York has a one-year statute of limitations and it follows a “single publication” standard, meaning that publishing a story once begins the limitations period and even if additional copies are made down the road, the period is not reset. That doesn’t hold for a republication — if the speaker is repeating the claim and “the second publication is intended to and does reach a new group” then the period is reset. Examples might be “a morning and evening edition[] of a newspaper” or “a rebroadcast of a television show.”

Dershowitz claims that his recent appearances to defend himself by calling Virginia Guiffre a liar should be considered a single publication of his calling her a liar years ago. But that really hinges on the idea that his recent statements were not — to quote from a case that he cites — “an attempt to reach a new audience that the statement’s prior dissemination did not encompass.” Except, he says the reason he’s been speaking about this recently stems from a new Miami Herald story that renewed speculation about the case. So he’s saying that new people have started believing these allegations and that’s why he needs to make these public claims in his defense which… would seem to prove that he’s intending to reach a new audience that was not reached with the prior dissemination.

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The case he cites here is actually interesting since it held that new articles repeating the prior claims posted on an internet news site couldn’t be a republication because the material on an accessible internet board is presumptively broadcast to the universe, which makes sense. But does a TV appearance — that isn’t readily accessible to anyone just banging around the internet — get the same leeway? It would seem that the Restatement claim that a rebroadcast of a television show constitutes republication would prove that it doesn’t, but it’s an argument.

Dershowitz’s secondary argument is that the First Amendment’s protections for self-defense — especially for a public figure — shield him from defamation here. There’s a pretty good case to be made that if someone is accused of rape, they get to call their accuser a liar. More complicated is if one can start making specific allegations about the accuser being involved in an extortion plot run by her attorneys. That pushes the envelope a little further and whether or not it pushes it too far will be up to Judge Preska.

Let’s see what this case has in store for us next.

(Check out the whole motion on the next page.)

Earlier: Some (Tentative) Good News For Alan Dershowitz… And Some More Bad News
Dershowitz’s Motion To Disqualify Boies Schiller Immediately Dumped For Hilarious Reason
Harvard Law School’s Dershowitz Moves To Disqualify Boies Schiller In Sex Trafficking Case
Dershowitz Wanted A Trial Over Sex Trafficking Accusations — He’s Getting One

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HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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