WASHINGTON, Oct. 23, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- A federal jury delivered a verdict in favor of Christopher Chandler after finding that Donald Berlin and his company Investigative Consultants Inc. published false statements about him in a defamatory dossier. The $8,000,001 award is the second-largest defamation verdict ever returned in Washington, D.C.
The case arose from a dossier written more than 20 years ago, which made false and highly damaging allegations about Mr. Chandler. Mr. Chandler brought defamation proceedings against the author of the dossier, Mr. Berlin, in federal court in Washington, D.C., and in September of 2023, the court granted Mr. Chandler's motion for summary judgment, holding that the allegations were both false and defamatory as a matter of law. This means that the allegations were unquestionably baseless and entirely false. "Berlin simply drafted a report that was a wholesale fabrication," the court wrote. More details regarding the ruling can be found here.
One year after that watershed ruling, a D.C. jury heard evidence showing that Berlin published his false dossier with a reckless disregard for the truth. Among other things, the jury heard that Berlin fabricated the report by cutting and pasting from news articles about unrelated companies, then inserting Mr. Chandler's name to intentionally pass off Mr. Chandler's legitimate business as a criminal enterprise. Mr. Chandler's counsel delivered a final punctuation mark on a six-year battle for truth and justice: "There's nothing that we can do that will stop these accusations from echoing for eternity. But in our system, in this democracy, each of you is empowered to render a verdict that also echoes for eternity."
The jury found that Berlin acted maliciously in publishing the false allegations and awarded Mr. Chandler $8,000,001 in compensatory and punitive damages. The jury's verdict delivers a clear message that lies have consequences, particularly when one sells them for a paycheck, smearing the hard-earned reputation of an innocent man. Their verdict underscores the belief that this behavior is simply not acceptable in a moral and just society.
Not only has this case resulted in the complete victory for and exoneration of Mr. Chandler, it has created new law for other victims of character assassination, including by extending D.C.'s one-year statute of limitations in defamation cases to include circumstances where the defamation is only discovered years after the fact, and by creating precedent where victims of baseless reputational damage are not put on trial when falsity is irrefutable.
Throughout the six years it has taken to conclude this case, Berlin was offered countless opportunities to simply apologize and publicly retract his false allegations but refused to do so.
It is intended that the verdict awarded will be applied to fund the philanthropic programs sponsored by the Legatum Foundation, thereby turning something destructive into a resource that can help and build up others.
