Robert S. Rifkind, who performed a pivotal function in efficiently defending Time journal in opposition to a $50 million libel swimsuit filed by Ariel Sharon, the previous Israeli basic, protection minister and later prime minister, died on March 12 at his dwelling in Manhattan. He was 88.
The trigger was problems of myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular illness, his daughter Amy Rifkind stated.
Mr. Sharon’s swimsuit was prompted by a single paragraph within the Feb. 21, 1983, situation of Time. It referred to an Israeli authorities report on the bloodbath months earlier by Christian Phalange militiamen of at least 800 and as many as 3,500 civilian refugees, largely Palestinians, within the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. The bloodbath occurred after Israel invaded Lebanon and the nation’s president-elect, Bashir Gemayel, the Phalange chief, was assassinated.
The article recommended that Mr. Sharon had personally mentioned retribution with Mr. Gemayel’s household, and that the Israelis regarded the opposite approach when the Phalangists extracted their revenge.
A jury present in 1985 that Time had misrepresented Mr. Sharon’s function within the bloodbath. However the jury concluded that the journal’s reporting didn’t meet the authorized threshold for libel in america as a result of it didn’t publish the article with precise malice or a reckless disregard for the information.
An Israeli fee’s damning conclusions that Israeli forces didn’t cease the bloodbath led to Mr. Sharon’s resignation as protection minister. However the fee’s report didn’t say that Mr. Sharon himself had talked about revenge to the Gemayel household.
“The case is actually not about libel, however a political instrument within the plaintiff’s fingers,” Mr. Rifkind, whose regulation agency, Cravath, Swaine & Moore, represented Time, stated whereas the swimsuit was pending. “A pitched battle by which David, the Israeli battle hero, smites Goliath, the American company large, is nice political fodder.”
Mr. Sharon, who later turned the prime minister of Israel, declared victory, of types, as a result of the jury discovered that Time had acted “negligently and carelessly” in publishing the disputed paragraph. The case value the journal thousands and thousands in authorized charges.
“Rifkind was a very good lawyer, who argued most of the motions, and did an admirable job,” U.S. District Courtroom Choose Abraham D. Sofaer, who presided over the case, stated this week in an e-mail.
When the lead protection lawyer, Thomas D. Barr, was ailing and the Time govt who was monitoring the case was in another country, and with Mr. Sharon desirous to return to Israel to marketing campaign for workplace, Mr. Rifkind negotiated a proposed settlement of the lawsuit on the idea of a ready assertion.
“The assertion didn’t embrace any cost and even an apology,” Choose Sofaer recalled. “It merely stated that Time didn’t intend to convey that Sharon had given permission for the murders. Rifkind had undoubtedly secured a extremely favorable outcome within the case. Sharon was bored with the litigation and gave his political life a greater precedence.”
Time, nonetheless, assured of a favorable verdict, rejected the proposal. The next discovering that the journal had been negligent — although not malicious — bolstered Mr. Sharon’s case when he sued Time in Israel, the place the malice customary didn’t apply, and gained a settlement there.
The case precipitated a sensation in america and the Center East for its political implications and its influence on the media business.
Mr. Rifkind figured in a number of different main circumstances, together with a profitable protection of the 1964 Voting Rights Act when he was assistant to the U.S. solicitor basic at the time, Thurgood Marshall, a publish he held from 1965 to 1968.
Mr. Rifkind argued a number of circumstances earlier than the Supreme Courtroom. He was concerned in Miranda v. Arizona, the 1966 case that established that cops should inform suspects of their constitutional rights earlier than questioning. He labored on South Carolina v. Katzenbach, by which the Supreme Courtroom dominated in 1966 that federal intervention to let eligible residents of particular person states register and vote was constitutional beneath the fifteenth Modification. (Nicholas Katzenbach was the U.S. lawyer basic.) And he represented New York Metropolis voluntarily, or professional bono, in lawsuits within the Eighties and ‘90s difficult the federal decennial census due to what town stated was an undercount.
Mr. Rifkind was additionally concerned in Jewish affairs. He served as president of the American Jewish Committee from 1994 to 1998.
“Bob Rifkind was what all attorneys aspire to be,” stated Evan R. Chesler, Cravath’s former presiding companion and chairman. “He was good, had a majestic command of the language and was unfailingly courteous to all those that labored for, with and in opposition to him.”
Robert Singer Rifkind was born on Aug. 31, 1936, in Manhattan to Adele (Singer) and Simon H. Rifkind. His father, was a federal choose and later a companion within the agency that turned generally known as Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in 1950, 4 years after it was based.
Bob Rifkind graduated from the Loomis College (now the Loomis Chaffee College) in Windsor, Conn., and earned a bachelor’s diploma in historical past from Yale School in 1958 and a juris physician diploma from Harvard College Legislation College in 1961.
He joined Cravath the subsequent yr and, aside from his stint with the solicitor basic in Washington, remained with the agency till he retired in 2001. He had senior counsel standing after retiring as a litigator.
In 1961, he married Arlene Brenner; she died in 2021. Along with his daughter Amy, he’s survived by one other daughter, Nina Rifkind, and 5 grandchildren.
His daughters, each attorneys, invoked their grandfather this week in a letter to Brad Karp, the chairman of Paul, Weiss, by which they publicly criticized the agency’s choice to commit $40 million in professional bono authorized providers for causes President Trump championed if the White Home rescinded an govt order that may have suspended Paul, Weiss’s safety clearances and prohibited its attorneys from getting into federal buildings.
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