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Lying liar could lose huge settlement against publisher over bogus Holocaust memoir

The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled today a small publisher can proceed with a lawsuit to overturn a large settlement against it by admitted liar Misha Defonseca for what turned out to be a completely fabricated tale of several years spent evading the Nazis during World War II.

Before the truth came out, Defonseca and her co-writer had won a $33 million settlement against Mt. Ivy Press over royalties and other issues related to what turned out to be the fake story of Defonseca's childhood spent sleeping in woods and winding up in the Warsaw Ghetto when she was, in fact, a schoolgirl in Brussels.

After Defonseca, who lived in Millis, admitted her fraud, Mt. Ivy sued to overturn the verdict. A lower-court judge tossed their lawsuit, saying the publisher had simply waited too long to appeal. But the appeals court said Defonseca's lying on the witness stand was so egregious it constituted a "fraud on the court," for which the normal statute of limitations does not apply and so Mt. Ivy's effort to free itself of the original verdict can continue:

Defonseca's entire case, and the manner in which she procured the judgment, was buttressed on what is now admitted to be a lie. The pleadings she filed were false and based on false information. The affidavits she submitted were premised on her phony life story. Her testimony at trial reiterated, and reinforced, her sympathetic but ultimately false tale. ...

There are some falsehoods that are so emotionally inflammatory that they impede the jury's ability impartially to evaluate facts and adjudicate a case. Falsely claiming to be a victim (and survivor) of the Holocaust is such a one, particularly where--as here--the claim is the foundation of a book that the publication, distribution, and marketing of were the subjects of the suit. Defonseca perpetrated this falsehood, and it lay at the center of the case.

Complete ruling.


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Comments

Not quite. The Appeals Court said that the publisher can proceed with an action seeking to void the earlier judgment in favor of the author.

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I've amended the original post.

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So let me get this straight- this person not only fabricated a story about being a Holocaust victim- but then- had the gall to sue the publisher of her lies (how did it even get published in the first place- do they have fact checkers?) for more dough? Absolutely nothing shocks me anymore. Utterly shameless.

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Wikipedia has a good part of the story. Today's decision has some of the dates, as well, but basically, she won her royalties suit before Mt. Ivy, with the help of a forensic genealogist was able to disprove her whole story.

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. . . would have been the part about being sheltered by a "friendly pack of wolves." Geesh. Unreal.

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Seriously!

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