PHOENIX, Sept. 27 (UPI) -- A judge in Arizona has ordered former U.S. Rep. Gary Condit to pay a weekly newspaper $45,000 to cover its legal expenses in a libel suit.
Superior Court Judge Kristin Hoffman found that Condit acted in bad faith when he sued the Sonoran News, a weekly that serves several small communities a few miles north of Phoenix. She said that the lawsuit lacked any merit.
The newspaper mentioned Condit, D-Calif., in passing in a story about his younger brother. Condit, who left Congress after a scandal involving his affair with an intern, Chandra Levy, was described as the “main focus” of an investigation into her death. The judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2005.
Daniel Barr, the lawyer representing the Sonoran News, said that awarding legal fees to defendants in libel cases is very unusual.
Levy’s body was found in 2002, a year after she vanished, in a Washington park. The death was ruled a homicide and remains unsolved.
In 2005, Dominick Dunne, a prominent true-crime writer and novelist, settled a suit brought by Condit, agreeing to apologize and pay an undisclosed amount.
