COURT REINSTATES SLANDER SUIT AGAINST RADIO HOST.

Byline: Associated Press 

A court commissioner can maintain a slander suit against a radio talk show host who claimed during a 1994 Antelope Valley judicial election campaign that the jurist ``likes and favors rapists,'' a state appeals court said.

Talk show host Herb Nero offered no evidence that his charges against Commissioner Victor Reichman were true or that he investigated them, the 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled this week.

The ``blatant falsity'' of several of Nero's statements, and his support for Reichman's judicial election opponent, were evidence that his accusations may have been knowingly or recklessly false, as required for a defamation suit by a public figure, the court said.

Lawyers for Nero said Friday they would appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Courts have virtually barred libel suits by political candidates, and judges should be no different, said attorney Rex Parris.

``If they decide to run with the bulls at Palermo, they shouldn't whine if they get gored,'' he said. He also said Nero's statement that Reichman likes rapists, made during a heated session with the commissioner on Nero's program, was clearly hyperbole rather than a statement of fact.

But Reichman's lawyer, Leonard Chaitin, said the statement was a lie and a proper basis for a slander suit.

``The First Amendment's not a club to be used . . . to maliciously attack people's reputation, even public figures,'' he said.

After Reichman, a Los Angeles Superior Court commissioner, ran unsuccessfully for a Municipal Court seat in the Antelope Valley, he sued Nero and KHJ radio station over comments during a combative pre-election program.

Nero said Reichman ``likes and favors rapists and releases them from prison early,'' the court said in its ruling Wednesday. He also said two governors and 75 percent of the voters had found Reichman completely unqualified to be a judge.

In a declaration attached to his suit, Reichman said he had sentenced one rapist to nine years in prison, rather than the 11-year maximum, in a plea agreement worked out by prosecutors, and had given all other convicted rapists the maximum terms.

He also said no governor had ever found him unqualified, and Gov. George Deukmejian had once offered to appoint him to the Municipal Court.

Because of Reichman's connection to the Los Angeles County court, the suit was assigned to Orange County Superior Court Judge Stuart Waldrip, who ruled that it was meritless and an attempt to interfere with free speech. He ordered Reichman to pay $37,000 to Nero and the station's owner, Eric Chandler Communications, for attorneys' fees.

But the appeals court, in a 3-0 ruling, reinstated the suit and said Reichman had shown a probability that he would prove his case.

``Nero's statement that Reichman `releases rapists early' was demonstrably and indisputably false, and highly damaging to a judicial candidate,'' said the opinion by Justice Richard Neal.

He also said Nero, in his own declaration, failed to disclose ``any investigation or evidence to support any of his statements about Reichman.''