WOBURN, Massachusetts (AP) -- An author who fabricated a best-selling memoir about surviving the Holocaust by living with wolves asked a judge Thursday to affirm a $32.4 million jury award in her favor.
Publisher Jane Daniel is trying to overturn a $32.4 million verdict a jury awarded in 2001.
Misha Defonseca said her publisher is too late to try to overturn the 2001 verdict the author and her ghost writer won in a fight over the book's profits.
Publisher Jane Daniel claims the jury sided with the authors because they believed Defonseca's harrowing tale of a tortured childhood was true.
Defonseca acknowledged earlier this year her stories of being taken in by wolves to escape the Nazis, killing a German soldier in self-defense, and walking across Europe in search of her parents were her own fantasies. In fact, Defonseca admitted she isn't even Jewish.
However, she and ghost writer Vera Lee argue the statute of limitations has expired on Daniel's attempt to throw out the verdict, and the veracity of the tale is irrelevant.
"Nothing was concocted to defraud the court," Defonseca said Thursday. "I had been telling my story for years and believed it to be true."
Daniel's attorney, Joseph Orlando, argued the statute of limitations should not apply because of Defonseca's confession. "(The jurors) based their decision on lies," Orlando said.
Judge Timothy Feeley did not indicate when he would rule on Daniel's motion to toss the verdict.
Overseas, "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years" was translated into 18 languages and was turned into a feature film in France, but it sold only 5,000 copies in the United States.
The jury found Daniel failed to promote in the United States and hid profits. The jurors awarded Defonseca $7.5 million and Lee $3.3 million, and a judge later tripled those amounts after finding Daniel and her small publishing company, Mt. Ivy Press, had misled the authors and tried to claim the book's royalties.
The authors later settled with Daniel to pay a lesser amount, including the surrender of property. Daniel has said her father paid $425,000 to Defonseca, while Lee received $250,000 from a settlement Daniel received after suing her literary agent and has the right to sell her house in Gloucester.
Frank Frisoli, an attorney for Lee, said the jurors based their verdict on Daniel's deception -- not on whether the book was true -- and that Daniel was too late in trying to undo the verdict.
"I see no reasonable basis for this action. They're far outside any time limits," Frisoli said.
1 comment:
How awful that the Rosenblats lied about their story and that the publishers and movie makers and Oprah didn’t figure it out. So sad.
Some Holocaust love stories are true. The NY Times featured a story about the famous comic book artists Stan Lee and Neal Adams and a story they were publicizing.
The story is about Dina Gottliebova Babbitt who was a 19 year old art student at Auschwitz. There she was asked by the Jewish head of the children's camp to paint something to cheer them up. Dina painted a mural of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and in the end, Dina's art became the reason for her salvation.
Painting the mural for the children caused Dina to be taken in front of Dr. Mengele, the Angel of Death. She thought she was going to be gassed, but she bravely stood up to Mengele and he decided to make her his portrait painter, saving herself and her mother from the gas chamber.
After the war, Dina applied for a job to be an animator and the person interviewing her turned out to be the man who created Snow White & the 7 Dwarfs for the movie. They fell in love and got married. Show White saved Dina's life twice!
Post a Comment