Stringer should drop his lawsuit: Defamation case against his accuser harms justice

This week, Scott Stringer sued Jean Kim for defamation, claiming that she did “irreparable harm to him and his political future by spreading vicious lies” during his 2021 campaign for mayor, when she accused him of sexually assaulting her years earlier. He demands a retraction and money damages.

Political campaigns can be nasty, and their press coverage bruising. I was a candidate for public office in New York City during the same cycle in which Stringer ran, and I sympathize with his frustration with what he perceives to be a devastating lie. I understand the wish to defend oneself. But what may be good for Stringer — going after Kim personally in court and being able to say he did “everything in [his] power to expose her lie” — will have a terrible, chilling effect for survivors of sexual assault.

Leadership requires acting in the greater good. That is why I am calling on Stringer to do the right thing and withdraw his complaint against Kim. If he wants to defend himself against her accusations, he can and should continue to do so vigorously in the court of public opinion.

A public figure suing a self-identified victim of sexual assault sends a frightening message to other survivors who may be considering coming forward with claims against their abusers: come forward and you best be ready to lawyer-up, at great personal cost, regardless of whether you are telling the truth.

Stringer’s timing could not be worse. On Thanksgiving Day, the Adult Survivors Act, a new law in New York State, opened a one-year lookback window allowing adult survivors of sex crimes to sue their abusers, even if it would otherwise be too late to bring a case. I support this important law and have counseled women considering using it to find some measure of justice and accountability for crimes they suffered long ago, when it was harder for them — and for women in general — to be heard on claims of sexual assault. I have also counseled women considering speaking out in other ways.

The Daily News Flash

Weekdays

Catch up on the day’s top five stories every weekday afternoon.

In my experience, survivors are frequently nervous to assert their claims, not just because of the harsh and cynical pushback that accusers of sex crimes often get generally, but also specifically because the fear of facing an expensive defamation suit — even a totally meritless one — hangs in the air. Indeed, this was one of main reasons for the founding of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, to support women whose legitimate claims of assault and harassment could be countered, and quashed by, illegitimate retaliatory claims of defamation.

What is worse, the one-year statute of limitations for bringing Stringer’s defamation claim has clearly expired, and his argument for restarting the clock is convoluted and dangerous. Kim came forward in April 2021. Trying to back out of a legal dead-end more than a year and a half later, Stringer has offered a multi-step theory.

Kim attended an event for and spoke with Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney over the summer. “It was reasonably foreseeable that after Kim met with Maloney at her campaign event, her false and defamatory statements would be repeated” in Maloney’s own campaign against Stringer’s political mentor. In August, Maloney accused her opponent of campaigning “with a man accused of sexual assault” — thus, according to Stringer, “republishing” the allegation and restarting the clock for him to sue Kim. (Maloney did not identify Stringer by name.)

If a court were to endorse Stringer’s theory, it would nullify the entire concept of a statute of limitations. Survivors would have to live in perpetual fear of a defamation suit if the media were to pick up on an old claim. Sexual predators, following Stringer’s lead, could always claim that victims who talked to a reporter could be sued years later, since the possibility of the media “republishing” their allegations was foreseeable. (If this were true, Harvey Weinstein’s victims could be vulnerable to defamation suits any time a writer recounts the history of the #MeToo movement.)

The court is unlikely to endorse Stringer’s statute of limitations theory. Perhaps bringing a weak and largely symbolic case, one destined to fail almost immediately on this technicality, does not interfere with Stringer’s immediate goals. He can argue that he took every legal step possible to repair his reputation.

Stringer’s case does not exist in a vacuum, and has not gone unnoticed. (Nor would he want it to, since his stated goal is to demonstrate publicly that he is defending himself.) And the blast radius of his decision is huge. Women who speak out against sexual assault often pay a high price. With Scott Stringer’s move, the price just went up.

Farhadian Weinstein, a former federal and state prosecutor in New York, is of counsel at Kaplan Hecker & Fink.