2012 senior class photos
2012 West Carrollton graduation
Home of the Week
Home > Blogs > Dayton Courts: Legal and crime news > Archives > 2009 > March > 30 > Entry
WHIO settles lawsuit with Diamonds Cabaret owners
DAYTON — WHIO-TV agreed to pay $1,500 to the owners of Diamonds Cabaret on Monday, March 30, settling a defamation lawsuit the owners filed against the television station.
The trial was to start Monday. Luke Liakos and Scott Conrad, owners of Diamonds Cabaret in Washington Twp., claim the station defamed them in a January 2003 news broadcast, including advertisements and the lead-in to the broadcast, concerning the Total Xposure club in Troy.
“The court notes that it is possible that some members of the viewing public could have drawn impressions from the story about Total Xposure that were not intended by WHIO,” Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Barbara Gorman said in a statement for the record that was approved by both parties.
Under the settlement agreement, the station is not acknowledging any liability, said Robert Bartlett, attorney for WHIO-TV.
The decision was financial, as the station decided it would be cheaper to pay $1,500 than to go to trial for a week, said Bartlett who has represented the Dayton Daily News and other Cox Ohio Publishing newspapers on First Amendment issues for many years.
Reporter Becky Grimes declined comment, as did Liakos.
“I think this is a good compromise of a difficult situation,” said attorney Dennis Lieberman, who represented Liakos and Conrad.
At issue was now-defunct nightclub Total Xposure, which had been owned by Liakos and Conrad, but was closed in October 2003.
In advertisements and lead-ins, the station aired statements from a former dancer who “stated that the owners at the Club wanted to have sex with her and that she refused and implied that a former employee refused to have sex within the club and therefore lost her job,” according to the plaintiffs’ statement filed with the clerk of courts office.
The woman also said that the club owners wanted her to perform sex acts, live on the Internet.
Liakos and Conrad claimed the dancer only worked at the club for four hours and never met them, and that her statements dealt with club owners in general. But the editing of the interview tape would lead a reasonable viewer to conclude she was talking about Total Xposure, Liakos and Conrad, according to plaintiffs’ statement.
WHIO claimed that it was clear that those statements were about club owners in general, and that the plaintiffs have admitted all specific statements about Total Xposure are true, according to defendant’s statements filed by Bartlett.
WHIO also denied that the stories damaged the plaintiffs, because “the stories did nothing to injure Plaintiffs’ already poor reputations,” and that the station will show that sales at Total Xposure increased after the station did stories about the club, according to the defendant’s statement.
Troy police raided Total Xposure on May 4, 2003. On Oct. 16 that same year, an order issued by Miami County Common Pleas Court shut down the cabaret portion of the club.
Liakos and Conrad were asking for damages due to revenue loss from the January 2003 broadcast until the club closed, in the approximate weekly amount of $3,500.
Permalink | |
