In a prelude to the main event a the nine-month old lawsuit against Holtec International, a state judge was to hold oral arguments Friday, after deadline for RadWaste Monitor, about whether the company can sue an ex-employee for defamation.
Kevin O’Rourke, former chief financial officer of the Jupiter, Fla.-based company, sued Holtec in June, alleging that the company misrepresented the value of its businesses in a draft investor pitch to South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering and Construction.
Last week, O’Rourke’s lawyers, Javerbaum Wurgaft Hicks Kahn Wikstrom & Sinins of Elizabeth, N.J., blasted Holtec in a new filing in the Superior Court of New Jersey in Camden County, writing that the company’s defamation claim is “futile.”
“The only ‘statements’ Defendants allege Plaintiff actually made [were] the statements Plaintiff made in his lawsuit, which are protected by litigation privilege,” O’Rourke’s lawyers wrote in their Jan. 11 filing. “Plaintiff cannot be liable for defamation based on media articles or a press release, especially when he did not direct anyone to publish the information.”
Holtec says it was defamed, meaning in this case that it was subjected to written mischaracterizations that could harm the company’s reputation and cost it money, by a pair of since-retracted news stories and a statement on Javerbaum Wurgaft Hicks Kahn Wikstrom & Sinins’ website that remained online as of Tuesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, the court on Tuesday had not scheduled arguments or set a trial date to settle the big claim in O’Rourke’s lawsuit: that Holtec inflated the value of several business lines, including its now-stalled interim waste storage business in New Mexico.
