Friedman v. Bloomberg LP
| Decision Date | 25 March 2016 |
| Docket Number | Civil No. 3:15-cv-443(AWT) |
| Citation | 180 F.Supp.3d 137 |
| Parties | Dan Friedman, Plaintiff, v. Bloomberg LP, Christopher Dolmetsch, Erik Larsen, Michael Hytha, Andrew Dunn, Milltown Partners, Patrick Harversen, D.J. Collins, Oliver Rickman, Palladyne International Asset Management BV, Ismael Abudher, and Lily Yeo, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Connecticut |
Alan H. Kaufman, Kaufman LLC, New York, NY, Stephen G. Grygiel, Silverman, Thompson, Slutkin & White, LLC, Baltimore, MD, for Plaintiff.
Edward J. Davis, Yonatan Berkovits, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, Derek J.T. Adler, Ned H. Bassen, Hughes, Hubbard & Reed, New York, NY, Samuel M. Leaf, The Law Office of Samuel M. Leaf, Westport, CT, Alfred U. Pavlis, Finn Dixon & Herling, Stamford, CT, for Defendants.
Alvin W. Thompson
The plaintiff brings this action in response to statements published in a news article about an employment action brought by the plaintiff against his former employer and others. The complaint has two counts: defamation (Count I) and punitive damages (Count II).
Defendants Milltown Partners LLP (“Milltown”), Patrick Harverson,1 David-John Collins, and Oliver Rickman (collectively the “Milltown Defendants”) and Palladyne International Asset Management BV (“Palladyne”), Ismael Abudher and Lily Yeo (collectively the “Palladyne Defendants”) move to dismiss the complaint in its entirety pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(2) and 12(b)(6)
for lack of personal jurisdiction and failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. Defendants Bloomberg L.P. (“Bloomberg”), Christopher Dolmetsch, Erik Larsen, Michael Hytha, and Andrew Dunn (collectively the “Bloomberg Defendants”) move to dismiss the complaint in its entirety pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. The motions to dismiss are being granted.
“The complaint, which [the court] must accept as true for purposes of testing its sufficiency, alleges the following circumstances.” Monsky v. Moraghan, 127 F.3d 243, 244 (2d Cir.1997)
.
The plaintiff, Dan Friedman (“Friedman”), is a former employee of Palladyne, which is based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He was fired by Palladyne in February of 2012 after working there since November 2011. On March 25, 2014, Friedman sued Palladyne, Abudher, Yeo and others alleging fraudulent inducement. Friedman alleged that “Palladyne was in fact no more than a front for $700 million of Libyan patrimony funneled to Palladyne by the late Shukri Ghanem, defendant Abudher's father-in-law and the former Prime Minister of Libya under the deposed Ghaddafi regime” and that through a “studied, systematic and fraudulent series of misrepresentations by Palladyne and its agent ... [Palladyne] lure[d] Friedman to a company that was little more than a fancy parking lot for defalcated money.” (Complaint (Doc. No. 1) (“Complaint”) at 2.)
On March 27, 2014, Bloomberg published an article about Friedman's fraudulent inducement lawsuit. This case arises from publication of that article.
Friedman alleges the following:
(Complaint ¶¶ 20–22.)2 He argues that by publishing these statements, Bloomberg violated the “standards of ethics and professionalism taught in the leading journalism degree programs” as well as the Bloomberg Businessweek Code of Journalistic Ethics. (Complaint ¶¶ 23–24.) More specifically, he alleges that neither the article's primary reporters, defendants Dolmetsch and Larsen, nor the article's primary editors, defendants Hytha and Dunn, “made any effort to contact Friedman” to solicit his version of events. (Id.¶ 25.) Friedman alleges that he contacted Bloomberg repeatedly, “[giving] Bloomberg the opportunity to rectify the errors that its reporters and editors had committed.” (Id.¶ 28.) The Complaint alleges that Bloomberg never made any correction.
Friedman alleges that the statement regarding as much as $500 million in damages was false because the claims in the complaint in the employment case were pled in the alternative and his “base claim” was only for $44,941,000. (Id.¶¶ 30–31.) He alleges:
The Reporter and Editor defendants were part of a legal reporting team and fully familiar with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and its provisions for alternative pleading. Further, as legal reporters and editors, they knew or should have known that alternative theories of recovery do not allow for cumulative damages and that Friedman's Inducement Case did not contain a claim for $500,000,000 in damages.
(Id.¶ 90.)
Friedman also alleges that the representation that Friedman repeatedly attempted to “extort” money from Palladyne was “libel per se as it accused Friedman of having repeatedly engaged in felonious conduct.” (Id.¶ 74.)
Friedman alleges that “[i]nitially Bloomberg and the Reporter and Editor defendants published the defamation out of negligence and in direct contradiction of their professional ethics standards.” (Id.¶ 71.) “[B]y failing to correct or retract the defamatory statements” after being contacted by Friedman, Bloomberg “acted with reckless disregard of the plaintiff's reputation and caused him serious and irreparable harm.” (Id.¶ 72.) Friedman alleges that the defendants made the allegedly defamatory statements when they knew that he was “unemployed and looking for work” and that the allegations by the defendants would negatively impact his “employment prospects in his chosen career.” (See id.¶¶ 75–78.)
With respect to Milltown, Friedman alleges that “at some point” after 2012, Palladyne hired Milltown to handle bad publicity about the company. Friedman alleges that after Bloomberg published the article, he “learned that defendant [Harverson] had made calls to other reporters, publishing the same information to them that [was] published in the Article” and that “other information had been emanating from an email address known as press@palladyne.com.” (Id.¶ 60.) He further alleges, “on information and belief,” that “defendants Yeo and Abudher managed the information disseminated through press@palladyne.com and also were the primary contact persons for the Milltown defendants.” (Id.¶ 61.) Friedman alleges, “on information and belief,” that the “Milltown and the Palladyne defendants were the sources of the defamatory information published by the Bloomberg defendants.” (Id.¶ 62.)
On a Rule (12)(b)(2) motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, the plaintiff bears the burden of showing that the court has jurisdiction over the defendant.
Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. v. Robertson–Ceco Corp., 84 F.3d 560, 566 (2d Cir.1996)
, cert. denied, 519 U.S. 1006, 117 S.Ct. 508, 136 L.Ed.2d 398 (1996). Where a defendant challenges “only the sufficiency of the plaintiff's factual allegation[s], in effect demurring by filing a Rule 12(b)(2) motion, the plaintiff need persuade the court only that its factual allegations constitute a prima facie showing of jurisdiction.” Ball v. Metallurgie Hoboken–Overpelt, S.A., 902 F.2d 194, 196 (2d Cir.1990). “[W]hen a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction is decided on the basis of affidavits and other written materials ... the allegations in the complaint must be taken as true to the extent they are uncontroverted by the defendant's affidavits.” MacDermid, Inc. v. Deiter, 702 F.3d 725, 727 (2d Cir.2012) ().
When deciding a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6)
, the court must accept as true all factual allegations in the complaint and must draw inferences in a light most favorable to the plaintiff. Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 236, 94 S.Ct. 1683, 40 L.Ed.2d 90 (1974). Although a complaint “does not need detailed factual allegations, a plaintiff's obligation to provide the ‘grounds' of his ‘entitle[ment] to relief’ requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do.” Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007), (citing Papasan v. Allain, 478 U.S. 265, 286, 106 S.Ct. 2932, 92 L.Ed.2d 209 (1986) ()). “Nor does a complaint suffice if it tenders ‘naked assertion[s]’ devoid of ‘further factual enhancement.’ ” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009) (quoting Twombly, 550 U.S. at 557, 127 S.Ct. 1955 ). “Factual allegations must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level, on the assumption that all allegations in the complaint are true (even if doubtful in fact).” Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555, 127 S.Ct. 1955 (citations omitted). However, the plaintiff must plead “only enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Id. at 570, 127 S.Ct. 1955. “The function of a motion to dismiss is ‘merely to assess the legal feasibility of the complaint, not to assay the weight of the evidence which might be offered in support thereof.’ ” Mytych v. May Dept. Store Co., 34 F.Supp.2d 130, 131 (D.Conn.1999) (quoting Ryder Energy Distribution v. Merrill Lynch Commodities, Inc., 748 F.2d 774, 779 (2d Cir.1984) ). “The issue on a motion to dismiss is not whether the plaintiff will prevail, but whether the plaintiff is entitled to offer evidence to support his claims.” United States v. Yale New Haven Hosp., 727 F.Supp. 784, 786 (D.C...
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