Rathergate Continues In Court And The Media Today
 Thursday, April 10th, 2008

Legal counsel for Dan Rather and CBS Corp. met again in court today.  Last month, Manhattan Judge Ira Gammerman re-affirmed that Rather's $70 million lawsuit against the network giant would not be dismissed; today, Judge Gammerman again ruled the suit may progress, although presented what may be a minor setback for the plaintiff's counsel:  motions to dismiss some of the complaints in the suit were granted, including the portions of the suit that name Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone, CBS President Leslie Moonves, and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward.

The first cause of action - breach of contract against CBS - will continue.

"The complaint alleges that Rather delivered his last broadcast as anchor of the CBS Evening News on March 9, 2005," Judge Gammerman ruled, "And from that date until May 2006...he was prevented from functioning as such inasmuch as he was provided with little staff support, editing services were denied to him, and few of his proposed stories were approved.  Accordingly, Rather will be given an opportunity to show that his nominal assignments as a correspondent did not relieve CBS from its obligation to pay him."

"The alleged damage to Rather's reputation, resulting from his ouster from the nationally prominent place he had occupied on CBS News, coupled with the near silence that he was required to keep for more than a year, was not an unforeseen byproduct of the alleged breach of contract...and indeed, it appears to be the very harm that [a portion] of the 2002 contract was meant to avert."

The second cause of action, breach of fiduciary duty against CBS, will continue.

"The length of his contractual relationship with CBS, and the nature of the service that he performed under his contracts with CBS, whereby he became the public face of CBS News after Walter Cronkite retired, made his relationship with CBS more than the relationship of employer and an employee...Accordingly, it would be premature, at this stage, to dismiss this cause of action."

Though CBS Corp. could legally be held liable for the old Viacom, Inc.'s actions, Judge Gammerman ruled that there was no objection to the acts of the individual defendants (Redstone, Moonves, and Heyward) being outside the scope of their employment, therefore the complain against those specific individuals was dismissed.

Lead attorney for CBS, James Quinn, said "We are very pleased with this.  The rest is what we consider a garden-variety contract dispute."

Dan Rather's counsel firmly disagrees.  "Justice Gammerman issued a decision today which leaves in place the entire essence of Mr. Rather's lawsuit against CBS and Viacom, including both contract and tort claims," said Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal in a statement.  "Although not every legal theory of the case survives, as a result of the decision, the Court has permitted discovery and a trial of all of the factual issues that form the basis of Mr. Rather's lawsuit, including his $70 million claim for compensatory and punitive damages."

The defendants' statement that all that is left is a "garden variety contract dispute," they say, "is simply inaccurate."

The suit is based on the actions taken by CBS after the September 2004 broadcast that Dan Rather narrated, in which it was reported that:  President George W. Bush avoided military service in Vietnam by using his father's political connections in Texas to accepted instead into the Texas Air National Guard; and that, once in the Guard, he shirked duties, refused a physical examination, disobeyed a direct order of a commanding officer, and failed to complete his military commitment.

(Full ruling here)

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