As promised, Dan Snyder refiled his lawsuit against the Washington City Paper inside the District yesterday. In an op-ed published Monday night, Snyder claimed that the suit would be “essentially the same.” Apparently, dropping the hedge fund which owns City Paper’s parent company and including City Paper columnist Dave McKenna as a defendant while burying previous claims that the paper was anti-Semitic and attacked his wife falls under Snyder’s definition of “the same.”
According to the Washington Post, it appears that Snyder’s lawyers changed the venue because New York-based Atalaya Capital Management, which owns Creative Loafing, City Paper’s parent company, “had nothing to do with the defamatory comments” and instead appear now to be honing in on McKenna. It’s all part of an enormous flip-flop by the R******s owner, who suddenly has appeared to have misplaced his righteous outrage about the alleged anti-Semitism of the illustration that accompanied “The Cranky Redskins Fan’s Guide to Dan Snyder” and the ludicrous claims that McKenna unfairly went after his wife in the piece.
McKenna isn’t commenting about the refiled lawsuit (which you can read in full at the bottom of this post), but City Paper editor Michael Schaffer told the Post that the City Paper “stand[s] by our story and intend to vigorously defend ourselves.” The first hearing in the suit is scheduled for July 29, where Snyder lawyer Lanny Davis will have his first chance to apply his vast experience representing “coup supporters in Honduras, a dictator in Equatorial Guinea, for-profit colleges accused of exploiting students, and a company that dominates the manufacture of additives for infant formula” to the defense of Snyder’s interests.
