PHILADELPHIA – A University of Pennsylvania anthropologist has sued a host of media outlets, reporters, the Association of Black Anthropologists and the Society of Black Archaeologists over their alleged defamatory reports of her supposed mishandling of the remains of a victim from the MOVE Bombing of 1985, with some of those entities now looking to dismiss her case.
Dr. Janet Monge initially filed suit in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas on May 20 versus the University of Pennsylvania; UPenn officials Amy Gutmann, Wendell Pritchett, Kathleen Morrison, Deborah Thomas, Christopher Woods and Paul Mitchell, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Billy Penn, The New Yorker, ESPN, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, Slate, The New York Post, Teen Vogue, Hyperallergic Media, Smithsonian Magazine, Al-Dia News and The New York Times, in addition to each of the reporters who authored stories on the events in question for those publications, plus the Association of Black Anthropologists and the Society of Black Archaeologists.
The case was removed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on July 27.
MOVE Bombing & Victims’ Remains Background
On May 13, 1985, the Philadelphia Police Department firebombed a West Philadelphia house on Osage Avenue occupied by MOVE, a Black liberation organization. The resulting explosion and fire killed 11 people, including five children, and left more than 250 people homeless.
In the wake of the bombing, the children’s bones were given to then-UPenn anthropologist Dr. Alan Mann and the plaintiff, Monge, then a graduate student, for them to examine and attempt to identify, but they were unable to do so. However, the children’s remains were neither identified nor returned to the City at that time.
Instead, Mann stored the remains in his office at the Penn Museum until he retired in 2001 and joined the faculty at Princeton University. Mann left the remains with Monge, who then stored them in her office and in the Physical Anthropology Lab at the Penn Museum for the next 20 years. During this period of time, Monge showed the remains to different individuals and groups on at least 10 occasions, before using them in a demonstrative exhibit for an online video course at Princeton in 2019.
In early 2021, both UPenn and the City of Philadelphia began investigations into the mishandling of the children’s bodies, after it became known that the official order for cremation of the remains was never carried out. That cremation order was given in 2017 by Thomas Farley, the City’s now-former Department of Health Commissioner, without their family’s permission of their family. The City later fired Farley.
During this time, the City Medical Examiner’s Office admitted that it had remains of two of the five children killed in the MOVE Bombing, who were later identified as Katricia and Zanetta Dotson.
An internal report commissioned by UPenn found that “Mann’s retention of the remains from 1985 to 2001 after he was unable to identify them, and his failure to return them to the Medical Examiner’s Office, demonstrated extremely poor judgment, and a gross insensitivity to the human dignity as well as the social and political implications of his conduct.”
The report also found likewise, that “Monge’s retention of the remains from 2001 to 2021 and their use in the Princeton Online video course demonstrated, at a minimum, extremely poor judgment and gross insensitivity to the human dignity and social and political implications of her conduct.”
Monge Files Wide-Ranging Lawsuit for Defamation
A host of articles were published, some by the defendant media organizations and in particular, the locally-based Philadelphia Inquirer and Billy Penn, in the spring of 2021, after it was learned that Monge used the children’s remains as an exhibit in the course at Princeton.
The resulting widespread public outcry, Monge says, led to her demotion from Associate Curator at the Penn Museum to Museum Keeper, and to her no longer being permitted to teach at UPenn.
According to Monge, the media attention from the matter caused irreparable damage to her reputation, painting her as an insensitive racist and causing her to receive harassment in the form of hate mail, angry phone calls and death threats – and that, in part, some of the information in the coverage particularly critical of her and damaging to her reputation came from defendant Mitchell, who authored a paper on the debacle and allegedly distributed it to “Penn employees, MOVE members and several media outlets.”
A number of the defendants have filed motion to dismiss Monge’s litigation.
Philadelphia Inquirer Defendants Say Their Articles Are Not Actionable
In their Aug. 12 dismissal motion, defendants The Philadelphia Inquirer, op-ed author Abdul-Aliy Muhammad and columnist Jenice Armstrong say Monge has failed to state a cognizable claims with regards to them.
“Both the Muhammad op-ed and the Armstrong opinion column fit comfortably in each category because the notorious MOVE Bombing and its aftermath is plainly a matter of ‘concern to the community’ and ‘a subject of legitimate news interest.’ Given that both the Muhammad op-ed and Armstrong opinion column address matters of public concern, Philadelphia Newspapers v. Hepps makes falsity a constitutionally-mandated element of Dr. Monge’s defamation claims against the Inquirer defendants,” the dismissal motion stated, in part.
“This means that, for the defamation claims against The Inquirer defendants to survive dismissal, Dr. Monge must identify a statement or implication about her in the Muhammad op-ed and the Armstrong opinion column that is ‘provable as false.’ Put differently, she must point to an allegedly false statement or implication that is ‘sufficiently factual to be susceptible of being proved true or false.’ Because Dr. Monge has failed to do so here, her defamation claims against The Inquirer defendants should be dismissed.”
Among other arguments, the defendants in question countered that nowhere in Monge’s lawsuit does it show they published their articles in a concerted effort to damage her reputation through actual malice.
For counts of defamation, defamation by implication, false light and civil aiding and abetting, the plaintiff is seeking compensatory and punitive damages in excess of the statutory minimum for arbitration, and grant such other and further relief as this Court deems just and appropriate.
The plaintiff is represented by Alan B. Epstein and Adam J. Filbert of Spector Gadon Rosen Vinci, in Philadelphia.
The defendants are represented by Ali M. Kliment, Alexis Caris, Benjamin K. Jacobs and Michael L. Banks of Morgan Lewis & Bockius; Michael R. Galey and Todd A. Ewan of Fisher Phillips; Eli M. Segal and Peter H. LeVan Jr. of LeVan Stapleton Segal Cochran; Ronald A. Giller of Gordon & Rees; Andrew A. Chirls of Fineman Krekstein & Harris; Kathleen D. Wilkinson of Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker; Joseph L. Turchi and Michele L. Weckerly of Salmon Ricchezza Singer & Turchi, Thomas Paschos of Thomas Paschos & Associates; Michael E. Baughman of Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders, all in Philadelphia, Michael K. Twersky and Alberto Longo of Fox Rothschild in Blue Bell, Daniel W. Meehan of Gordon & Rees in Florham Park, N.J., plus Alexandra M. Settlemayer, Amanda B. Levine and Jeremy A. Chase of Davis Wright Tremaine in New York, N.Y.
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania case 2:22-cv-02942
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com