The Region - News from Dec. 23, 1986

A federal judge in New York refused to release a Soviet bank’s New York account, frozen in a Los Angeles libel judgment, and ordered the case transferred to California. U.S. District Judge Mary Johnson Lowe refused to grant the Soviet Union’s Bank for Foreign Trade a preliminary injunction against the freezing of $450,000 ordered by another federal judge, David Kenyon in Los Angeles. Lowe said she did not have the authority to bypass Kenyon’s earlier ruling. Raphael Gregorian sued the Soviet Union for libel in California, claiming he lost a multimillion-dollar export business after being accused in the Soviet media of spying. Kenyon entered a default judgment against the Soviets after they failed to respond to allegations in Gregorian’s suit.