ALBANY, N.Y. -- When the state Court of Appeals resumes work next week, still staggered by the biggest scandal of its 145-year history, one of the first cases it hears will involve a seamy saga of sexual abuse by Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione.
The state's highest court will hear an appeal by a former Penthouse Pet-of-the-Year who successfully sued Guccione for sexual harrassment, but whose punitive damages award of $4 million was overturned by a mid- level appeals court.
Hearing the arguments will be the six associate judges of the court. Their former leader, Chief Judge Sol Wachtler, will be at his Long Island home under house arrest after being charged by the FBI with trying to blackmail a former mistress.
Wachtler's sudden plunge from power began Saturday, when he was pulled over and arrested on the Long Island Expressway by FBI agents.
He was confined after his arrest in the psychiatric ward of a New York City hospital, shackled to his bed and under a suicide watch, and was placed under house arrest Tuesday.
The six remaining judges, led until a new chief judge is named by Senior Associate Judge Richard Simons, will decide whether to restore the $4 million in punitive damages originally awarded to Majorie Lee Thoreson, the 1975 Penthouse pet-of-the-year.
Thoreson, also known as Anneka DiLorenzo, was involved ina relationship with Guccione and testified during the 1989 trial of her lawsuit that Guccione forced her to have sex with business clients and to perform in a sexually explicit film.
She said she was fired by Guccione in 1980 for refusing sexual favors.
State Supreme Court Justice Elliott Wilk said 'sexual slavery was not part of her job description' and awarded Thoreson $60,000 in compensatory and $4.06 million in punitive damages.
But the Apellate Division of the state Supreme Court, while agreeing Guccione was guilty of sexual harrassment, ruled the state's human rights law does not provide for punitive damages.
Thoreson's lawyer, Murray Schwartz of New York City, rejected that contention.
'Punitive damages are intended to punish and deter,' Schwartz said. 'Not only are they appropriate, if punitive damages are not provided, the whole basis of the human rights law is going to be where it's been for years -- nowhere.'
The case will be argued in Albany Tuesday.
