Re: 1/26/01 - Yale Herald: With reputation at stake, Van de Velde fights back
With reputation at stake, Van de Velde fights back
BY MATTHEW FERRARO
In a libel suit filed against the Hartford Courant on Thurs., Jan. 12, 2001, former Yale lecturer James Van de Velde, ES '82, complained of "false, defamatory, and malicious" statements in an article printed exactly two years earlier. He issued a press release on Tues., Jan. 23, 2001, notifying the Courant, which reported on Wed., Jan. 13, 1999 that two female television reporters had filed complaints with the New Haven Police Department (NHPD) alleging that Van de Velde was harassing them, of the suit. The next day he issued a statement announcing his plan "to hold certain Connecticut institutions and individuals accountable for their misconduct, slander, and false statements, which wrongly propelled my name into the [Davenport senior] Suzanne Jovin murder investigation." That same day he filed a suit alleging defamation in Superior Court against Quinnipiac University, claiming that it wrongfully dismissed him from a master's degree program shortly after he was identified as a suspect in Jovin's murder.
Through these lawsuits, Van de Velde is "trying to set the record straight," his lawyer, David Grudberg, TC '82, told the Herald. According to the suit against the Courant, the "plaintiff's good name and character have been greatly injured, his ability to find and keep employment has been severely affected, and he has suffered great mental anguish and embarrassment."
Van de Velde, a former diplomat and political science lecturer, was working closely with Jovin as her senior thesis adviser at the time of her death. Police questioned Van de Velde, along with many others, immediately after Jovin was stabbed to death in the upscale East Rock neighborhood of New Haven on Fri., Dec. 4, 1998. Four days later, the police interviewed Van de Velde for several hours and, with his consent, searched his car and home. In January 1999, NHPD spokeswoman Judy Mongilo was quoted as saying that Van de Velde was in a "pool of suspects" under investigation. No other suspects were identified in the press.
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FILE PHOTO
James Van de Velde, ES '82, hopes to restore his reputation in the aftermath of the Suzanne Jovin murder.
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From questions to slander
On Mon., Jan. 11, 1999, Yale relieved Van de Velde of his teaching duties, explaining that his presence would constitute a major distraction for students.
The Courant reported this fact in the Jan. 13 article in question. But the lawsuit revolves around what the two authors of the story, Dave Altimari and Eric M. Weiss, wrote about Van de Velde's alledged conduct with two female television reporters.
In the statement released on Wed., Jan. 24, Van de Velde said that the paper "either wrote utterly false information to defame and slander me, information which they should have known to be false, or they were manipulated by a New Haven police officer who was bent on insinuating my guilt in the Suzanne Jovin murder case by feeding misinformation to gullible journalists. Neither Mr. Altimeri or Mr. Weiss asked to see copies of complaints against me (they could not have, since there are none), nor did they solicit my comment on their story, nor did they confirm the complaints with the alleged complainants." According to the suit, Van de Velde requested that the paper issue a retraction of the statements, but the Courant refused.
"The allegation that the plaintiff [Van de Velde] was the target of New Haven police complaints filed by women journalists has been repeated by others reporting on the story," and has contributed to the spreading of these libelous statements, Van de Velde's complaint goes on to say. The Courant sticks by its story, though. While Altimari declined to comment on the suit, Clifford Teutsch, the Courant's managing editor, told the Herald on Thurs., Jan 25, "We believe our story was accurate. We believe the story's right."
According to legal sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the Courant could be found guilty if Van de Velde's attorney proves that the article was false, defamatory, and published with some degree of fault. If Van de Velde proves that the underlying charge—that he harassed the female reporters—is false, he should win the case. Also, since Van de Velde is a private citizen, he only has to prove that the story was published with negligence rather than that the newspaper had malicious intent. The Courant may invoke a privilege, however, that allows the paper to report that complaints have been filed with the police, even if those complaints themselves are false. The paper could also exonerate itself by proving that the source cited in the article lied.
Coming after Quinnipiac
Van de Velde is suing Quinnipiac and its public relations representatives on similar grounds. He claims that they are guilty of slander—making spoken statements that they knew were untrue—and libel—writing statements that they knew to be untrue.
Quinnipiac has cited academic reasons for its decision to dismiss Van de Velde from its graduate program in broadcast journalism. In the Quinnipiac lawsuit, however, Van de Velde claims that it was his publicized connection to the Jovin investigation that prompted the university to terminate his candidacy and make the slanderous and libelous statements to the media. The complaint notes that on Wed., Dec. 9, 1998, the New Haven Register wrote that the NHPD had spent several hours interviewing the "prime suspect" in Jovin's murder. The next day, the Register reported that police had questioned Van de Velde extensively. The lawsuit claims, "When read against the backdrop of the Dec. 9th `prime suspect' article in the Register, it was clear that Van de Velde was the `suspect' referred to in that article."
That same day, Paul Steinle, the director of the Quinnipiac program and a co-defendant in the suit, sent Van de Velde a letter notifying him that he was suspended from the master's program, effective immediately. Steinle explained that the suspension came as a result of two television stations where Van de Velde worked having terminated his internships.
"Both allegations in the Steinle letter were false, and [Van de Velde], through representatives, informed Steinle of their falsity," the lawsuit alleged. The lawsuit also notes that representatives from both television stations with whom Van de Velde was interning had confirmed that he had not been fired from either internship. Several weeks later, on Fri., Jan. 15, 1999, the Register cited "sources" from a letter saying that Van de Velde was dropped from the program because he did not complete the internships. The lawsuit claims that the letter the sources mention is the one Steinle sent Van de Velde on Thurs., Dec. 10, 1999, which "was an academic record required to be kept confidential under federal law, and therefore only plaintiff and Quinnipiac had access to it." Thus, theoretically since Van de Velde did not make the letter public, the Register could only have received it if Steinle or someone else at the university leaked it. Van de Velde claims that the letter was false and that Quinnipiac knew it, thereby disclosing defamatory information.
Van de Velde is also suing Quinnipiac and another spokesperson, Lynn Bushnell, on a second count of defamation. On Jan. 29, 1999, in an article published in The New York Times, Bushnell stated that Quinnipiac dismissed Van de Velde for "academic reasons." The lawsuit claims that this statement was "defamatory, false, and malicious" because Bushnell must have known that "Van de Velde had satisfied all academic requirements for the Fall 1998 semester in the Program." The suit also claims that this statement especially damaged Van de Velde because he was a university professor at the time and thus the article "implied academic failure by him." All that John Morgan, director of Public Relations at Quinnipiac University and a named co-defendant in the suit, had to say when reached by the Herald was, "Our policy is not to comment on lawsuits."
In order to prove that he has been defamed, Van de Velde must show that actions of the defendants lowered his prestige. Despite the fact that he is a professor, proving that he lost prestige because someone claimed erroneously that he had poor grades is difficult, a legal expert said.
How the proceedings proceed
What happens next? With these two lawsuits just beginning, and his quest to hold the institutions that wronged him "accountable," it appears unlikely that this is the last we will hear of Van de Velde. Currently living in Virginia and working for the Pentagon, he remains the only person ever publicly named as a suspect in the Jovin murder case. The police have not released new information about the homicide in nearly two years. Van de Velde told reporters on Thurs., Jan. 25, that he plans to sue both Yale and the NHPD. Grudberg, Van de Velde's lawyer, declined to confirm those reports.
One interesting aspect of the case that goes unexplained is why, if the article in the Courant was so devastating, Van de Velde waited nearly two years after the article was published to file suit. If he had waited one more day, the two-year statute of limitations for defamation suits in Connecticut State would have expired. Grudberg refused to speculate on this question, but he stressed the importance of "setting the record straight when you've been wronged."
All materials © 2000 The Yale Herald, Inc., and its staff.
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