Radio Host Eskin Settles Defamation Suit

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York

By Melissa Nann Burke
September 10, 2004

Sports-radio personality Howard Eskin was suspended by WIP-AM yesterday for 30 working days, and station owner Infinity Broadcasting Corp. agreed to pay "substantial compensation" to attorney Richard A. Sprague under the terms of a settlement reached Wednesday, concluding a defamation suit Sprague brought against Eskin last year.

Lawyers involved in the case would not disclose the settlement amount yesterday.
Also part of the settlement agreement, the station broadcast apology statements by Eskin and the station's general manager addressed to Sprague yesterday that will continue to run today and over the weekend.

Sprague's lawyers, Shanin Specter and Thomas R. Kline, said they were pleased that the case had been resolved.

Attorneys representing Eskin and Infinity declined to comment.

Sprague had sued Eskin for on-air comments he made during his weekday-afternoon show two years ago "falsely and maliciously" accusing Sprague of witness tampering and other misconduct in connection with a criminal proceeding involving Allen Iverson, who Sprague represented when the 76ers star was charged with carrying an unlicensed gun into a West Philadelphia apartment in 2002, according to Sprague's complaint.

"Eskin made the accusations without any basis in fact and continued to make them after he and the radio station were notified by others, including callers, that Eskin was acting improperly," Sprague alleged in Sprague v. Eskin, which also listed WIP-AM (610) and Infinity, a division of Viacom, as defendants.

The suit was filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas.

Sprague claimed that as a result of Eskin's comments in July and August 2002, his reputation was damaged, and he suffered humiliation, embarrassment, mental anguish, and a loss of standing in the community and in the legal profession.

The criminal charges against Iverson were dismissed by the court with the exception of one charge that was later dropped by the District Attorney's Office.

The prerecorded statements of apology by Eskin and his station's general manager, Marc Rayfield, were broadcast yesterday, and were scheduled to be broadcast again today at approximately 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. and through the weekend, according to the settlement terms.

In his apology, Eskin said:

"I suggested on my radio show that attorney Richard Sprague had paid a witness in the Allen Iverson case to lie in court. I also suggested that Mr. Sprague said a lie detector test showed that another witness had lied. None of this is true. Mr. Sprague did not pay a witness to lie, and Mr. Sprague never said a witness failed a lie detector test. In fact, I have known for some time that there was never any lie detector test, but never said so on my radio show."

Eskin apologized to Sprague and his family. He also apologized to his audience "for making such statements about a preeminent member of our community," he said. "I also apologize for not correcting the record for over two years, and instead doing so only after Mr. Sprague sued me."

Rayfield's statement was made on behalf of Infinity. He said the company agreed with the content of Eskin's mea culpa and added its own.

"We also owe Mr. Sprague additional and separate apologies for failing to correct the record on a timely basis," Rayfield said in the statement.

He noted that Eskin's suspension stood for the station's judgment that, "in addition to substantial compensation to Mr. Sprague for the resulting injury to reputation, we needed to make clear our disapproval of Mr. Eskin's conduct in order to deter this sort of behavior from him and others in the future."

At a deposition in June, Eskin told lawyers that no one at the radio station checked the factual accuracy of what he said on the air as it related to issues in the lawsuit. Eskin also said that he didn't try to contact Sprague while reporting on the Iverson case, according to a transcript of the deposition.

Had the case gone to trial, Sprague - as a public figure - faced the tough legal standard of proving Eskin's comments on the air to be false, defamatory and spoken with "actual malice," that is, with reckless disregard for the truth or with the knowledge that the statements were false.

The complaint focused mainly on comments Eskin allegedly made regarding alleged communications between Sprague and one of the witnesses in the Iverson case, Hakim Carey.

"[Carey] was supposed to see the prosecutor on Friday, to just go over what his statement was to the police and, you know, when they were investigating everything. He never showed up and the word was he went to talk to Richard Sprague," the complaint quoted Eskin from his radio show.

According to the complaint, Eskin then asked his audience: "Now, I don't know if, that, any attorney can kind of enlighten me on that. Would that be witness tampering? . . . So I'm just speculating now, that this Hakim Carey will be happy walking away with $10,000. I'm just speculating - Would you be happy with this?"

The complaint includes a quote from a caller who allegedly told Eskin he didn't think they should speculate as to whether Sprague was involved in such conduct with Carey, to which Eskin replied: "Well, I can speculate. I can absolutely speculate."

Eskin said on-air that Sprague got Carey to "flip-flop" his testimony by paying him, according to the complaint.

"Now, do you think Richard Sprague talked him [Carey] out of the truth? Absolutely, is my opinion, that he talked him out of the truth," the complaint quotes Eskin as saying.

Eskin's comments, the complaint said, implied that Sprague induced or conspired to induce Carey to testify falsely under oath. Neither Sprague nor anyone acting on his behalf did such a thing, the complaint said.

The complaint also contains additional excerpts from Eskin's show in which he said another witness, Charles Jones, failed a lie detector test and that Sprague released that information, an incident the complaint calls a "false rumor."

Neither Sprague, nor anyone acting on his behalf, "released, caused to be released or authorized or consented to the release of any information concerning Charles Jones and a lie detector test," the complaint said.

Eskin had no basis for alleging Sprague paid off a witness or that he disclosed the existence of a lie-detector test that showed another witness had lied, Specter said.

Specter said he and Kline had never contested that Sprague would have been considered a "public figure" for purposes of the litigation - a classification that would have required him to prove Eskin and Infinity acted with "actual malice."

"He's a high-profile attorney handling a high-profile case," Specter said.

He and Kline were assisted in the case by David J. Caputo of their firm.

Eskin, WIP-AM and Infinity were represented by Paul J. Greco and William J. O'Brien of Conrad O'Brien Gellman & Rohn, and lawyers from Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, Lee Levine in Washington, D.C., and Gayle C. Sproul in New York.

"We have decided that we would rather not comment on the settlement except to say we're pleased that the case has been resolved," Greco said yesterday.