Baltimore Lawyer Seeks $13M in Defamation Suit Against the Sun
Lawyer Ivan Bates is seeking $13 million in damages from the Baltimore Sun and two of its journalists in a suit that claims the newspaper’s articles falsely accused him of witness tampering.
The Daily Record describes Bates as “a prominent Baltimore criminal defense attorney.”
The stories involved Bates’ representation of a defendant accused of robbing a tow truck driver, the Daily Record reports. The stories, published last year, discussed allegations that Bates negotiated a deal in which a relative of the accused robber would pay the driver $690 not to pursue civil or criminal remedies, according to a Simple Justice blog account of the Sun story.
Bates told the Daily Record that the $690 was paid by a relative who held title to the car, and simply covered towing costs. He says he did not draw up the contract, it was not on his firm’s letterhead, and it was not meant to silence the victim. He says the Sun articles took comments out of context and ruined his reputation.
“The only thing I have as a lawyer is my name and my integrity, and that’s all I want back,” Bates told the Daily Record. “It’s like it was a bad dream and I want to wake up from it.”
