Judge throws out suit against Dow Jones, Barron’s reporter

Dow Jones & Co. Inc. and one of its reporters convinced a federal court in New York Tuesday to throw out a defamation lawsuit brought by a securities attorney who said he was wrongfully tied to a purported “pump and dump” stock-selling scheme in Barron’s, reports David McAfee of Bloomberg Law.

McAfee reports, “Dow Jones and financial journalist William Alpert were sued by Harvey J. Kesner, a lawyer who has focused on financial matters and was named in a Barron’s article, ‘The Lawyer at the Center of the SEC Pump-and-Dump Case.’ The article focused on Kesner’s ties to three companies whose stock prices were manipulated as part of purported pump-and-dump schemes by investor Barry Honig.

“Kesner also named as a defendant independent investigative journalist Teri Buhl, whom the court said has covered ‘the exploits’ of Honig and his associates for years.

“Kesner made a variety of allegations against Dow Jones and Alpert, claiming that the headline and body of the article defamed him by implying he engaged in securities fraud. Kesner specifically objected to numerous statements in Alpert’s article, including that Kesner had been ‘terminated’ from Haynes and Boone LLP.

“But use of the word ‘terminated’ didn’t carry a ‘defamatory construction,’ Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found.

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