Lawrence Lessig. (Courtesy photo.)NY Times Taps Morgan Lewis in Harvard Prof's Epstein Defamation Suit
Boston-based lawyer Jonathan Albano entered his appearance in the Massachusetts lawsuit filed by Harvard's Lawrence Lessig.
February 05, 2020 at 03:45 PM
3 minute read
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius has stepped in to defend the New York Times against a Harvard professor's defamation lawsuit related to a news report linking him with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Morgan Lewis partner Jonathan Albano, based in Boston, entered his appearance in the case Tuesday. Albano has previously represented the Times, including in a 2002 dispute over court records related to lawsuits involving Connecticut priests accused of abusing children.
Harvard's Lawrence Lessig claims the Times inaccurately portrayed him in a report that ran in September, which said Lessig was defending educational institutions' acceptance of donations from Epstein, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He filed his complaint last month in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
Epstein died by an apparent suicide in 2019 in a New York jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Albano did not respond to a request for comment on the case Wednesday. He was a partner at Bingham McCutcheon before Morgan Lewis acquired most of that firm's lawyers in 2014.
Lessig is represented by Howard Cooper and Tara Dunn of Todd & Weld.
After Lessig filed his complaint, a representative for the Times, vice president of communications Danielle Rhoades Ha, stood by the report in a statement to ALM and said the paper will "defend against the claim vigorously."
"When Professor Lessig contacted The Times to complain about the story, senior editors reviewed his complaint and were satisfied that the story accurately reflected his statements," Rhoades Ha said in that January statement.
In other recent federal lawsuits alleging defamation, the Times has turned to Ballard Spahr, which acquired media law boutique Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz in 2017, and Vinson & Elkins in Texas, as well as some small local firms in other jurisdictions.
The paper had also turned to Boies Schiller Flexner several times over the course of a decade, but that relationship was severed when a 2017 article in The New Yorker reported that firm founder David Boies had assisted attempts to block an article about Harvey Weinstein in the Times.
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Harvard Law Professor Sues New York Times for 'Clickbait Defamation' Over Jeffrey Epstein
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