The Virginia Defamation Law Blog
Laurie Fine, the wife of Bernie Fine, former Associate Coach of the Syracuse University men’s basketball team, has filed a libel and defamation action against ESPN and two of its employees, Mark Schwarz and Arthur Berko. ESPN published several stories about her relating to her husband’s alleged molestation of minors. She seeks compensatory and punitive damages.
In the 1980s, the Fines took in a Syracuse basketball ‘ball boy,’ Robert Davis, who later accused Bernie Fine of molesting him while he lived there. Davis also accused Laurie Fine of knowing about the molestation and allowing it to continue. He also claims to have had a sexual relationship with Laurie while he was in high school.
The complaint paints a picture of a troubled young man who financially took advantage of the Fines, often fabricating stories to trick them into giving him money. It asserts that, to elicit sympathy and funding, Davis told Laurie that Bernie had molested him in the 1980s but that the couple continued to enable him. The complaint portrays the plaintiff as suffering through conversations with Davis in hopes he would outgrow his problems, using sarcasm to keep from ‘going off’ on him and asking questions to ‘test’ how far the young man would go. These allegations appear to offer a different interpretation of statements attributed to her in a 2002 taped recording Davis made.
According to the complaint, Davis offered his molestation story to a Syracuse newspaper in 2002. The paper did not publish it due to lack of corroboration. He then approached ESPN and gave Schwarz and Berko a taped recording of a conversation he’d made, purportedly of a conversation he’d had with Laurie in which Laurie discusses her husband’s activities. ESPN did not publish the story, but Ms. Fine says the ESPN reporter and producer remained interested and kept in touch with Davis.
Ms. Fine claims Davis used the publicity surrounding the Penn State child abuse scandal to reignite his story. She says the reporters had developed ill will toward the Fines and had become so personally invested in the story that they accepted questionable corroboration of a recanting witness and sent another potential corroborating witness to Davis for coaching on what to say and then leaked the story to a newspaper to bolster the story.
In late 2011, ESPN published excerpts from Davis’ taped recording and published over 40 minutes of it last month. ESPN published several stories about Laurie Fine including one in February 2012 that quoted a Davis affidavit stating it was openly known that multiple Syracuse basketball players had engaged in sexual relationships with her.
Ms. Fine maintains that all these stories are false and ESPN’s publication of them with actual malice and reckless disregard for the truth constitutes libel and defamation. Her claims could depend on whether she was a public figure at the time of disclosure. Public figures do not enjoy the same level of privacy in their personal lives and carry higher burdens of proof when bringing defamation suits.
Ms. Fine was an active member of the Syracuse community, raising money for various charities that sought her out, especially child-related charities. She seeks damages for her damaged reputation, emotional distress, mental pain and suffering, permanent impairment of employability and related losses.