Justice Court candidate sues newspaper

Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2000 | 10:53 a.m.

North Las Vegas Justice of the Peace candidate J. Michael Schaefer has filed a libel lawsuit against the Las Vegas Review-Journal and its owners.

According to the lawsuit filed Tuesday in District Court, the Review-Journal printed an editorial in November 1998 in which it was mentioned that Schaefer had pepper-sprayed a 5-year-old girl and a man during an earlier altercation.

Schaefer contends that he did not pepper-spray the child and the Review-Journal had noted that fact in a correction it printed following a July 1998 story.

The Review-Journal refused his request to print a second correction on the editorial page and instead printed it in an "obscure" part of the paper, Schaefer alleges.

As a result, Schaefer claims, he lost in his 1998 bid for Las Vegas Township justice of the peace to Jennifer Togliatti, 57 percent to 43 percent.

What the Review-Journal printed was "malicious and false and exposed the plaintiff to hatred, contempt, ridicule, obloquy, causing him to be summed or avoided by a substantial number of the voting public," the complaint states.

"Few citizens would vote for a person who inflicted harm and distress upon small children."

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