Two insurance bigwigs have filed libel suits totaling $90 million against Eliot Spitzer, claiming that the hooker-loving former governor slimed them in a column by making false kickback allegations.
William Gilman, once managing director and head of marketing at Marsh & McLennan Cos. and Edward McNenney, the company’s former global placement director, are steamed over an Aug. 22, 2010, column written for Slate.com by the former state attorney general.
In the column, headlined “They Still Don’t Get It,” the hard-charging Spitzer — who once proclaimed, “I’m a f- -king steamroller” — said the plaintiffs’ former employer represented the essence of corporate greed.
“Marsh’s behavior was a blatant abuse of law and market power: price-fixing, bid-rigging and kickbacks,” Spitzer wrote in the piece, which he said he penned to counter a Wall Street Journal editorial that sought to “disparage the cases my office brought against Marsh & McLennan.”
The AG’s office under Spitzer had gone after Marsh & McLennan for excessive “contingent commissions,” fees paid by insurers to brokers, in the early 2000s, and the civil action forced an $850 million payout from the company in 2004.
Gilman’s lawyer, Jeffrey Liddle, said in his $60 million Manhattan federal court lawsuit filed Friday that while the column didn’t mention Gilman by name, it’s clear that “Mr. Spitzer made these statements with actual malice towards Mr. Gilman.”
“That Mr. Spitzer was referring to Mr. Gilman was certainly obvious to, and harmed Mr. Gilman in, the insurance industry and any other part of the public observing the events related to Marsh,” the lawyer wrote in court papers.
McNenney’s State Supreme Court suit seeks $30 million. He, too, wasn’t mentioned by name in Spitzer’s column.
Both men were found guilty in 2008, but their convictions were tossed in 2010 by a judge who cited new evidence.
Spitzer last night called the allegations “frivolous” and promised a strong defense.
The suits also name Slate, which declined to comment.
Gilman wants $20 million in general damages, $10 million in compensatory damages and $30 million in punitive damages and attorneys’ fees.