An Alaska corporation that obtained a $54 million federal stimulus contract to relocate the Napa Valley Wine Train’s tracks is suing the Center for Investigative Reporting, contending it was defamed in a Jan. 31 California Watch story about the project.
Suulutaaq Inc. and CEO Samuel Boyle filed the lawsuit in federal court in Anchorage on March 10. The company is seeking $24 million in damages and an apology. Boyle is seeking $8 million, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit also names California Watch senior reporter Lance Williams, who wrote the story, and the San Francisco Chronicle, which published it.
California Watch and the Center for Investigative Reporting are standing by the story.
“From what we can ascertain from their complaint, Suulutaaq cannot establish any errors that we made in reporting the story,” said Center for Investigative Reporting Executive Director Robert J. Rosenthal. “The story illuminated details about how stimulus funds are spent in California, focusing on a project that had already been criticized by elected officials. All of the facts in the story are based on multiple sources and public records – including records Suulutaaq itself submitted to government agencies.”
At issue is a California Watch report that described how an ambitious flood control project on the Napa River came to be financed with funds from the federal stimulus program, and how Suulutaaq obtained the job.
California Watch is a new project of the nonprofit, independent Center for Investigative Reporting that distributes enterprise and investigative stories to news partners across the state. To date, California Watch has distributed about 15 stories to 55 news partners. California Watch and the center have agreements with news distribution partners that protect partners against legal costs and damages in the event of a claim based on the work of any of the center’s reporters or editors.
The lawsuit says that the story wrongly led readers to conclude that “Suulutaaq does not deserve the federal contracts it has been awarded … is incompetent to perform the Napa Contract, for which the government overpaid … and is performing almost no work on the Napa Contract.”
All such inferences are untrue, the suit says.
The suit also complains that the story portrayed Boyle as “an incompetent businessman and a dishonest person who conned people” into investing in a dot-com for sail boaters that later failed. Actually, Boyle was blameless in the business’s failure, the suit says, and has “extensive business management experience” that is valuable on the Napa project.
The company and the executive both say they are entitled to punitive damages because publishing the story was “outrageous” and done with “reckless indifference” to their reputations.
Comments
via Twitter