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Trials & Litigation

Sued for defamation by lawyers he criticized in civil rights case, Dershowitz says they made his day

Outraged over the mention of his name in a federal civil rights filing concerning the sex trafficking of minors, famed emeritus Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz went into high gear.

Although he wasn’t named as a defendant in the motion, Dershowitz publicly criticized the two lawyers who filed it. In federal court motions Monday he sought to have the reference to him erased from their pleading and asked the court to compel the two lawyers to provide any evidence supporting their claims, CNN reports. The news network also provides a copy of a filed declaration (PDF) by Dershowitz in the Southern District of Florida case.

Additionally, Dershowitz said he would seek to have the two lawyers disbarred and threatened to sue them for defamation. However, on Tuesday they beat him to the punch, filing a defamation case (PDF) against him in Florida state court, reports the Wall Street Journal Law Blog (sub. req.).

Informed of the defamation suit, Dershowitz said he was thrilled. “This gives me a chance to litigate the case. I can expose their corruption,” he told the newspaper. “I can show how fraudulent the allegations are. This makes my day.”

In the Broward County suit, plaintiffs Paul Cassell and Bradley Edwards accuse Dershowitz of attacking their professional integrity in reckless disregard of the truth.

“Immediately following the filing of what the Defendant, DERSHOWITZ, knew to be an entirely proper and well-founded pleading,” their complaint alleges, “DERSHOWITZ initiated a massive public media assault on the reputation and character of BRADLEY J. EDWARDS and PAUL G.CASSELL accusing them of intentionally lying in their filing, of having leveled knowingly false accusations against the Defendant, DERSHOWITZ without ever conducting any investigation of the credibility of the accusations, and of having acted unethically to the extent that their willful misconduct warranted and required disbarment.”

Cassell, a former federal judge, is currently a law professor at the University of Utah. Edwards is a former Florida prosecutor now in private practice in the state.