Judge dismisses Toronto businessman's hate-mail lawsuit against former Marvel CEO
CBC
A Florida judge has dismissed a high-profile lawsuit launched by a Toronto businessman who had accused the former head of Marvel Entertainment of slandering him through a hate-mail campaign.
The ruling by Judge Cymonie Rowe of the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court may put an end to a nearly eight-year legal battle waged by millionaire Harold Peerenboom against American billionaire Isaac Perlmutter and his wife Laura Perlmutter.
"There is no evidence whatsoever that the Perlmutters had any hand in those mailings," Rowe wrote in her summary judgment, dated Monday.
Instead, Rowe singled out David Smith, a former employee of Peerenboom's executive search firm, Mandrake Management, who was fired in 2011, and Tom Thorney, a one-time business partner and friend of Smith's, as the letter-sending culprits.
The ordeal began in 2011 over a dispute about the management of the tennis court at the Palm Beach, Fla., condo complex where both men own homes. During that dispute, the Perlmutters sent out old news article clippings about Peerenboom to residents of their condo complex.
But from 2012 to 2015, thousands of anonymous letters were mailed out to Peerenboom's friends, family members and work colleagues in Toronto. Letters were also sent to fellow residents of the condo complex and to Peerenboom himself.
The anonymous letters falsely accused Peerenboom of being a child molester, murderer and antisemite. Peerenboom sued the Perlmutters, alleging they were behind this hate-mail campaign. While admitting to sending the clippings in 2011, the couple denied they had anything to do with the letters sent from 2012 to 2015.
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