Jeff Greene, the real estate mogul who lost Florida’s Democratic Senate primary to Kendrick Meek, appears to be making good on his threat to sue the St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald for libel, “claiming that articles they published cost him his bid for the United States Senate,” according to the New York Times:
Dogged by rumors about wild parties aboard his 145-foot yacht and about fraudulent real estate deals, Mr. Greene will seek at least $500 million in damages in part, he said, to teach the news media a lesson. ‘I want to send a message to every newspaper in the country: Do your homework,’ he said Tuesday in a telephone interview. ‘I deserve to have the record corrected, and they deserve to be punished.’
As the Times notes, the case may be hard for Greene to win, since current precedent states that public figures must prove “actual malice.”
That said, Greene has retained one of libel law’s heavyweights.