E-MAIL CHAUVINIST: Philadelphia anchor Larry Mendte accessed and leaked co-anchor Alycia Lane’s e-mails. Both have since lost their jobs (AP)
A judge has tossed sexy Long Island-born TV news anchor Alycia Lane’s lawsuit against former employer CBS — and possibly crippled her suit against the love-struck co-anchor convicted of spying on her e-mails — after ruling she spun a yarn about a laptop she trashed.
Philadelphia Judge Allan Tereshko wrote that Lane’s own testimony about the computer, which might have contained key evidence in her defamation suit against CBS and her former co-anchor Larry Mendte, “casts serious doubt upon . . . her credibility.”
The decision by Tereshko is just the latest blow to Lane, who lost her high-profile Philly anchor job in 2008 after being arrested for allegedly drunkenly slapping a New York cop, and after e-mailing bikini shots of herself to married NFL Network anchorman Rich Eisen.
Lane, who now works on a Los Angeles morning show, sued CBS and Mendte after being fired.
The married Mendte, who claimed to have engaged in a steamy relationship with Lane in Philadelphia, lost his own job there in mid-2008 after pleading guilty to federal charges of accessing her computer and leaking material about her to gossip columnists.
In early 2011, Lane revealed in a deposition for her suit that years earlier, she had thrown out a malfunctioning Apple laptop that she had been using during the time Mendte was spying on her e-mail accounts, and replaced it with another laptop, court records say.
During that same deposition, Lane testified that she had “absolutely no idea” where she could find some photos, noting, “I had a second computer since then.”
But more than a year later, she testified that she had the old computer “cloned” at an Apple store, and had its contents transferred to the new laptop.
Judge Tereshko wrote that revelation “flatly contradicted” her prior testimony that she had “no idea” where the pictures in question could be found.
Tereshko added that he believed “the computer was intentionally disposed of” and that “the after-the-fact attempt to conceal the disposition and obfuscate the issues surrounding the same support this finding of intent.”
“The latter invented story is a wholesale fabrication, and therefore places [Lane’s] conduct at the highest degree of fault,” Tereshko wrote.
Mendte’s lawyer, Julia Morrow, called the ruling “a stunning victory” and “true justice.”
Lane’s own lawyer, Paul Rosen, said, “She is upset, and I’m upset.”
A lawyer for CBS declined to comment.