PHILADELPHIA – Eight major publications are among a host of defendants seeking to dismiss defamation litigation from a University of Pennsylvania anthropologist, who claimed their allegedly defamatory reports of her supposed mishandling of the remains of victims from the MOVE Bombing of 1985 damaged her professional reputation and caused her to suffer harassment and death threats.
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 the 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.
More Media Groups Cite “Uncontested” Facts In Their “Truthful” Reporting
In an Aug. 12 dismissal motion, counsel for The New Yorker, Teen Vogue, The Daily Mail, ESPN, The Guardian, Slate, The New York Post and The New York Times referred to the case’s underlying facts as “uncontested” and what supported their coverage of the incident.
“Plaintiff does not dispute the truth of any of the foregoing facts. Instead, this lawsuit stems merely from her disagreement with how the media reported on her actions. While plaintiff may have viewed her course as the logical culmination to a career spent studying the MOVE remains, many members of the public saw her actions as dehumanizing to the deceased MOVE organization children,” the dismissal motion stated, in part.
“Indeed, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University issued immediate apologies, launched investigations into the MOVE bones, and, in the case of Princeton’s anthropology department, acknowledged that physical anthropology has historically ‘used, abused and disrespected bodies, bones and lives of indigenous and racialized communities under the guise of research and scholarship.”
The defendants argue the articles contain “non-actionable opinions grounded in truthful facts disclosed in the articles, not ‘of and concerning’ plaintiff, substantially true based on facts admitted in the complaint, or privileged as a fair report of official proceedings.”
“Likewise, as a limited purpose public figure, plaintiff does not – and cannot – plead that defendants published the articles with ‘actual malice.’ And, the defamation and false light claims against The New York Times Company and Michael Levenson are barred by Pennsylvania’s one-year statute of limitations,” the motion stated.
“Although plaintiff may dislike her depiction in defendants’ articles or believe that she is undeserving of the commentary on her and her institutions’ actions, she cannot maintain a cause of action based on these feelings alone. Because none of the challenged statements is actionable and because defendants should not be saddled with the burden of spending additional time and resources defending a meritless lawsuit targeting the exercise of their First Amendment rights, this Court should dismiss the complaint with prejudice as against defendants.”
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