BIAS SUIT AGAINST DISNEY THROWN OUT.

Byline: Associated Press 

A lawsuit that claimed that the Walt Disney Co. violated the civil rights of an AIDS-stricken dying executive was tossed out after the company presented evidence that the man took kickbacks from vendors.

U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian on Tuesday dismissed the suit filed by the estate of Robert Jahn, who was a senior vice president of creative services for Walt Disney Pictures and Television.

The estate contended that a month before Jahn died of AIDS in 1994, Disney executives appeared at his hospital bed and forced him to sign away more than $2.5 million in employee benefits.

But in court papers, Disney argued that Jahn agreed to give up the benefits in return for retaining his medical benefits and Disney's promise to keep secret his admission that he took hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from vendors seeking contracts.

The suit was filed against Disney, two subsidiaries and its insurer, Metropolitan Life, for alleged violation of the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, which bars employers from discriminating against handicapped individuals. The law also covers those with the AIDS virus.

Evan Rothberg, executor of Jahn's estate, contended that one of the vendors lied about kickbacks and that Jahn was interrogated relentlessly until he admitted limited complicity in a portion of the scheme. Any admission was made in the final stages of AIDS when Jahn was in a state of unsound mind, he said.

Dr. Phillip Zakowski, a physician who treated Jahn daily, testified in a deposition that Jahn was lucid.