Local News in Brief : Libel Suit Ordered to Trial

A libel suit against Carson council members Sylvia Muise and Tom Mills and council candidates Aaron Carter and Leon Cornell moved a significant step closer to trial when a judge rejected a motion to throw out the case.

The suit stems from the hard-fought council election of 1986, in which Michael Mitoma ran against Muise and Mills, who won. Mitoma won a council seat a year later in a special election.

At issue is a brochure used against Mitoma, president of Pacific Business Bank, in the final days of the 1986 campaign. Mitoma had served as a government witness in a drug money-laundering trial. He asserts that in the brochure, his answer to a question was given with a new question substituted to make it look like he and his bank were participants in the laundering.

Mitoma’s $62.5-million lawsuit alleges that Carter and Cornell, at the behest of Muise and Mills, sent out the brochure under the name of Carsonites Organized for Good Government.

In the ruling, Superior Court Judge Kurt Lewin said the attack may have been made with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard for the truth, conditions under which a public figure can collect damages in a libel action.

A trial date has not been set.