Marsh Executive Sues Spitzer

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Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has been hit with a $60 million libel lawsuit by a former Marsh & McLennan Cos. executive over a column posted on Slate.com concerning an insurance bid-rigging scandal.

William Gilman, a former Marsh marketing director, said Spitzer acted with “actual malice” by suggesting in an Aug. 22, 2010 column titled “They Still Don’t Get It” that he was guilty of crimes, including crimes he was never accused of, after his conviction had been thrown out the prior month.

Gilman filed his complaint in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Spitzer, in a phone interview, declined to comment. Rima Calderon, a Washington Post spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Gilman had been among eight insurance executives indicted in September 2005 as Spitzer, then New York’s attorney general, probed the alleged steering of clients to favored insurers in exchange for kickbacks.

Marsh agreed in January 2005 to pay $850 million in a civil settlement with Spitzer.

While Gilman was found guilty in February 2008 on a felony antitrust charge after a bench trial, the presiding judge threw out the conviction in July 2010, citing new evidence.

That case was dismissed in January. The other indicted executives either were acquitted or had their cases dismissed.

In his complaint, Gilman said Spitzer defamed him in writing that “Marsh’s behavior was a blatant abuse of law and market power: price-fixing, bid-rigging and kickbacks all designed to harm their customers and the market while Marsh and its employees pocketed the increased fees and kickbacks.”

Gilman also said Spitzer defamed him in writing that “many employees of Marsh” have been “convicted and sentenced to jail terms,” when none had.

“While Mr. Spitzer’s statements do not refer to Mr. Gilman by name,” the complaint said, “Mr. Gilman is readily identifiable as the subject of the defamatory comments. Mr. Spitzer was well aware of his own allegations as attorney general and the resolution of those allegations in favor of Mr. Gilman and yet, recklessly disregarded these facts,” it added.