3 Reporters Accused in Fresno Libel Case File Countersuit for $6 Million

A Fresno land developer who last December settled his $6-million libel suit against McClatchy Newspapers and several of its reporters out of court without receiving any money was served Wednesday with a countersuit by three of the reporters.

In their suit--also for $6 million--reporters Denny Walsh, Jerry Bier and James McClung charge developer Edward M. Kashian, three of his attorneys and two private investigators with conspiracy, negligence, malicious prosecution, invasion of privacy and abuse of the judicial process.

Libel suits have been filed against the media with increasing frequency in recent years, and Jane Kirtley, executive director of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press in Washington, D.C., said countersuits by media figures are “a tactic people in the media are starting to use to fight back.” Countersuits in libel cases are “uncommon but not unprecedented,” Kirtley said.

A weekly newspaper, the Martin Countian in Inez, Ky., won $21,000 in such a suit last year (the judgment is now on appeal), and the Charleston Gazette has a similar suit pending and is in the process of settling another.

Published Story

Kashian had sued McClatchy Newspapers, its president and five of its reporters after McClatchy’s Fresno Bee and Sacramento Bee published a story in May, 1982, that attempted to link Kashian and many other Fresno businessmen to organized crime and the bribery of public officials.

The story was based largely on a deposition and (its supporting exhibits) given by Walsh in yet another libel suit. The story was written by reporter Royal Calkins of the Fresno Bee, with some help from Jeanie Borba, also a Fresno Bee reporter. Walsh’s byline did not appear on the story, nor did the bylines of Bier and McClung, Walsh’s partners on McClatchy’s investigative reporting team. All the defendants in the case said Walsh, Bier and McClung had nothing to do with the story.

But Kashian charged that McClatchy, Calkins, Borba, Walsh, Bier and McClung had all conspired to maneuver the story into print via the deposition, a legally privileged process that newspapers can report on without fear of libel action if their reporting is “fair and true.”

Legal Procedures

Bier and Borba were ultimately dropped from the suit when Kashian and his attorneys decided they “probably had not been involved.” After more than three years of pretrial depositions and legal procedures, the lawsuit against the remaining defendants was settled in December, with the publication of front-page “clarifications” in the two Bee newspapers.

The “clarifications” said, in part, “The Bee did not then and does not now take the position that Mr. Kashian was a member of organized crime or was involved in criminal activity.”

The reporters’ lawsuit, filed March 6 in San Francisco Superior Court, charges that Kashian and the other defendants (and several “co-conspirators” not named as defendants in the suit) “filed and pursued groundless, meritless and sham defamation actions against the plaintiffs.”

Working Relationship

The suit also charges that the defendants tried to “disrupt and subvert the journalist(ic) purpose of the team, which was to report on extensive allegations of corruption in the Fresno area; to jeopardize the identity of plaintiffs’ confidential sources; to embroil plaintiffs in endless litigation, and to jeopardize plaintiffs’ working relationship with their employer.”

Kashian denied the charges. “I’ve never maliciously involved anybody in anything,” he said.

Although Kashian received no money when he settled his suit last December, the six-point settlement agreement did include a provision that McClatchy “assured Kashian that iits gift program over the next two years does include at least $415,000 to benefit the department of communications at Stanford University.