%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Editorial Board of CBS Incident Committee %%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Wednesday, July 13, 1994 (No. 9) ============================================================================= *** Part III. Activities *** ============================================================================= Contents # of Lines ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Report on meeting with an attorney in NYC (From: Luo Ning).................77 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This morning (July 6, 1994), Mr. Huang Lin and I met Mr. Arthur Block, an attorney in downtown Manhattan. We discussed the possibility of filing a lawsuit against CBS on its 5/19 program. Mr. Block is a high profile solo practitioner in New York City, specialized in libel, slander and civil rights, especially in political and minority cases, referred to us by the Bar Association of New York City. By the way, the Bar Association of NY has provided us with three attorneys but Mr. Arthur Block was the only one who has arranged a meeting with us. Mr. Arthur Block is a Harvard graduate. Our purposes of the meeting: (1) To explore the possibility of filing a lawsuit against CBS; (2) To seek legal advice in a more broader base; (3) To bargain for pro bono service or contingent payment. We had presented the following documents: 1) Transcript (copy from CBS original documents) obtained by Luo Ning from CBS directly; 2) CBS VP's letter to Mr. Shi, a retyped copy, 3) Xiao Dong's Background Study #13, which shows the illegal export case involves China is 3%; 4) Our News Release #1; 5) The tape of the 5/19 report. We could not bring the spy book because it has been out of stock in New York City. Mr. Arthur Block examined the material we had brought to him with keen interest. He understood our outrage instantly and pointed out all the fear we had, and all the possible impact of this report would have on our job application, background clearance, social discrimination and so on. He also pointed out that this report is not balanced, and that is interesting to have a Chinese American to report this program. (1) Mr. Block pointed out that we don't have a case against CBS at the moment from the evidence we presented to him, due to the protection of the First Amendment over the news media. If we are going to proceed with class action suit, we would have to, according to him, prove that CBS intentionally and maliciously presented false information, which is very difficult. (2) On the other hand, Mr. Block suggested that we might consider to go after the author of the book, or his employing government agencies. The author, Mr. Eftimiades in this case, does not have the kind of protection by law that a news agency enjoys. And such a book written by a current agent is very unusual, and Mr. Block pointed out this instantly. What we need to do is to find out evidence in the book which are both false and defamatory. Furthermore, since Mr. Eftimiades is a current employee of an US government agency, if we could find any evidence of linking some government policy with discrimination or slandering against minority ethnic groups, then there will be a case against the government. As an example, Mr. Block specifically mentioned the Waco case in which FBI is charged with defamatory of the Davidian Church and sending the government agents to confront them. To file a freedom of information act is one way to probe such useful information for us. (3) We asked the possibility for him just to file the lawsuit against CBS. He declined and said that a reputable lawyer would not file a lawsuit with little legal bases. (4) Mr. Block is very interested in offering legal advise to us with respect to other means of protest such as boycott. (5) He mentioned one interesting avenue: Every seven years, the license of local stations of TV networks have to be reviewed and renewed by Federal Communications Commission, and this is a channel for people complaining against unfair practices of TV networks. The New York State's reviewing is coming up soon. There must be also other states which are going to review the license this year. This is a great opportunity for us. (6) Unfortunately, Mr. Block is a solo practitioner and his pro bono time has been used up. It is difficult for us to pay for his service without any definitive goals. His rate is $200 per hour. However, Mr. Block is very interested in our case if we have found any trace of wrongdoing by the author. He expressed he would grant us another initial consultation at the same rate if we come up with new evidence against the author and/or the government. The meeting lasted for about 45 minutes. Huang Lin paid $25 for the referral consultation, which was supposed to be 1/2 hour. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% % Editor of CBS Incident Committee: Xiangdong Shi % % Sign on/off at listserv@ifcss.org, with mailbody as: % % sub fcbs-l Firstname Lastname, or signoff fcbs-l % % Post at fcbs-l@ifcss.org % % Anonymous ftp at ifcss.org:/ifcss/Legal/cbs % %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%