February 2, 2011, 5:39 pm Class Action Suit Filed Against Jimmy Carter Book
By PATRICIA COHEN http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/class-action-suit-filed-against -jimmy-carter-book/ Readers are often warned not to judge a book by its cover, but what about its publicity? That is the basis of a class-action lawsuit against former President Jimmy Carter and his publisher Simon & Schuster over his 2006 book ³Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid² which was filed in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday. David Schoen, a Montgomery, Ala., attorney who filed the suit, said by telephone that the book was falsely marketed as an accurate account of peace negotiations in the Middle East. ³You cannot market it as the absolute truth on something when it¹s not,² Mr. Schoen said, citing as examples criticisms of the account by the United States diplomat Dennis Ross and Kenneth W. Stein, a Carter adviser who resigned from the Carter Center after calling the book ³replete with factual errors.² The book became a target of criticism from the moment it was published because of the use of the word ³apartheid² in the title. Mr. Schoen said the pro-Israeli group Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America formally asked the publisher to make corrections, but was rebuffed. Adam Rothberg, a spokesman for Simon & Schuster, issued a statement: ³This lawsuit is frivolous, without merit, and is a transparent attempt by the plaintiffs, despite their contentions, to punish the author, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and world-renowned statesman, and his publisher, for writing and publishing a book with which the plaintiffs simply disagree. It is a chilling attack on free speech that we intend to defend vigorously.² Mr. Schoen denied free speech was involved, saying he would defend President Carter¹s right to give his opinion, but not to misrepresent the facts. ³There is an ongoing debate about the Mideast, and to misstate, mislead and misconstrue those things intentionally is a very grave, bad act.² He cited James Frey¹s 2003 book ³A Million Little Pieces² as a precedent. The Frey book was sold as a memoir but turned out to have largely fabricated portions. Thirteen class action suits were filed, and Mr. Frey¹s publisher, Random House, ended up agreeing as part of a settlement to offer a full refund to consumers who bought the book before Mr. Frey admitted to fictionalizing sections. The lawsuit against Mr. Carter was first reported Wednesday by Tablet magazine. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
