-Caveat Lector-
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2001 5:46 PM
Subject: Maine Million Mom Marcher gets Sued
Million Moms get sued. See www.hirammaxim.com - and see pix of shoot
Maine gun group sues Million Mom March
Maine Today Staff report Sept. 5, 2001 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
A group of machine-gun enthusiasts who celebrate the weapon with a
gun shoot and expo in Maine every year has filed a lawsuit against the
Million Mom March, accusing a spokeswoman of defamation.
The Hiram Maxim Historical Society Inc., named after the Mainer
who invented the machine gun in 1883, claims in its lawsuit that Cathie
Whittenburg of the Southern Maine Chapter of the Million Mom March
made false statements that harmed the society.
The society’s lawyer, Walter F. McKee, said Tuesday that his
client is a law-abiding organization that Whittenburg “essentially called
a bunch of terrorists.”
Not so, said Whittenburg: “All I can say is that I am flabbergasted and
dumbfounded and I am not prepared to talk to the press at this time.”
But she added, “I guarantee the allegations against me are false.”
The dispute goes back to July, when the society was holding its
annual extravaganza. Whittenburg was quoted in a July 21 Bangor Daily
News story as saying that she had planned to protest the event, but
decided not to after receiving an obscenity-laced e-mail.
The story said that “the message was not a threat against her
life, she said, but it was serious enough to have local Million Moms
change their plans about protesting in Dover-Foxcroft. The hate mail’s
sender is connected with the machine-gun event, the e-mail said.”
The same newspaper article para- phrased the machine-gun society’s
president as saying that “whoever sent the message was acting on his
own, not with the authority of the HMHS.”
According to the lawsuit, filed in Kennebec County Superior Court
last week, “Ms. Whittenburg stated that because of the e-mail, she did
not feel safe protesting in Dover-Foxcroft,” that the statements she
made “were made either negligently or with the knowledge of their falsity or
in reckless disregard of the truth,” and that the statements were
“allegations of serious criminal conduct or were allegations that would
adversely affect plaintiff’s fitness for the proper conduct of a business,
trade or
profession. Plaintiff has suffered special harm as a result of Ms.
Whittenburg’s statements.”
McKee said he wants to see the e-mail, which he said was not sent
by anyone associated with his client.
“We didn’t do this,” he said. “We want people to know that.”
He said the lawsuit is not an effort to silence opponents. “This
suit shouldn’t cause a chilling effect, because if people are going to speak
the truth, they aren’t going to be sued,” he said.
The Million Mom March has faced other challenges in other states.
The Second Amendment Foundation, a Bellevue, Wash.-based
organization focused on the right to privately own and possess firearms,
asked the attorney general of California to investigate why the Million
Mom March received free office space at San Francisco General Hospital
through the Trauma Found- ation.
Nancy Hwa, a spokeswoman for the Brady Campaign and the Brady
Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said she was not aware of the Maine
lawsuit, but that “it wouldn’t be the first time that somebody from our
side has been threatened. We get threatening mail all the time.”
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