THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 29, 1996 TAG: 9606290219
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 61 lines
A judge ruled Friday that disc jockey Henry ``The Bull'' Del Toro may have slandered rival Tommy Griffiths by repeatedly calling him a drug addict on the air last year, even if Del Toro did it in jest.
Circuit Judge Kenneth N. Whitehurst Jr. refused Del Toro's motion to throw out the lawsuit.
Del Toro's attorney argued that his client's broadcasts on WROX-96X were comedy routines that could not be taken seriously. Griffiths' attorney argued that, humorous or not, the statements were defamatory.
The judge agreed that the statements could be defamatory - an issue that a jury ultimately may decide.
``I think the plaintiff has met his burden in this particular case,'' Whitehurst ruled. ``The court cannot find that the statements are not defamatory as a matter of law. There are plenty of statements that could be defamatory as a matter of law.''
On Monday, both sides will set a trial date, probably several months in the future.
The next step will be dealing with Del Toro's motion to dismiss the lawsuit because his broadcasts were substantially true. He claims Griffiths has used cocaine. Griffiths, a disc jockey at WNOR-FM99, denies it. No date for that motion has been set.
The lawsuit, filed in March, seeks $800,000 in general damages and $350,000 in punitive damages against Del Toro, his radio partner Perry Stone, WROX station manager Robert Sinclair and station owner Sinclair Communications.
Griffiths and Del Toro were partners for five years at WNOR, where they formed the popular team of Tommy & The Bull, until Del Toro left for the rival station last June.
In his lawsuit, Griffiths says Del Toro, Stone and Sinclair conspired to hurt his reputation among listeners and broadcasters by telling listeners that Griffiths was a cocaine addict.
The lawsuit cites 35 to 39 broadcasts from August to December 1995 in which Del Toro and Stone referred to Griffiths as a ``coke head,'' ``whiff king,'' ``snort boy,'' ``cokey boy,'' ``Mr. Toot'' and ``Frosty the Snowman,'' among other things.
An attorney for Del Toro, Stone and Sinclair argued in court Friday that this was just morning drive-time comedy and that Griffiths was overreacting.
``No reasonable person could take these statements seriously. . . . It can only be understood as purely nonsensical entertainment,'' said the lawyer, Michael Sullivan of Washington.
But Griffiths' attorney, Robert Samuel Jr., argued that even comedy can be slanderous if it states a fact that is defamatory and is provably false. He also argued that this case, unlike similar cases of shock-jock defamation, involved a pattern of attacks over several months.
``This isn't an isolated incident of obvious parody,'' Samuel said.
The judge agreed. In his ruling, he noted that Del Toro's broadcasts were unlike those of famous cases involving Howard Stern and David Letterman because Del Toro's statements ``went on for months.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos
Tommy Griffiths
Henry Del Toro by CNB