More on Lott vs. Levitt and HarperCollins

Regarding John Lott, Jr.'s lawsuit against Steven Levitt and HarperCollins: you may have seen Monday's article in The Chronicle of Higher Education that described how Levitt made "a doozy of a concession".

What you may not have seen is this: John has moved to file an amended complaint. In that motion John states (pp. 2-3), "First, since the entry of the Order, Lott has uncovered explicit evidence of Levitt’s malice towards him, which was previously unknown to Lott and which now is specifically alleged in the Amended Complaint. (Ex. B, ¶¶ 16-20.)”

Paragraph 17 of Exhibit B is as follows:

“Examples of Levitt’s hostility to Plaintiff [John Lott] abound. For example, and not by way of limitation:

a.       Levitt accused Plaintiff publicly of reaching rigged statistical results;

b.      Levitt asserted publicly that Plaintiff may suffer from mental illness;

c.       Levitt publicly described Plaintiff’s scholarly arguments as nonsense and as embarrassing or fraudulent;

d.      Levitt made defamatory statements about Plaintiff to an individual who was a total stranger to Levitt, but after pretrial discovery demonstrated the falsity of Levitt’s statements he admitted that they had been untrue;

e.       Levitt publicly referred to Plaintiff as an idiot and the anti-Christ;

f.        Levitt stated publicly that Plaintiff as engaged in stupid and misleading distortions of data; and

g.       Levitt said publicly that an academic presentation Plaintiff was scheduled to make would be filled with outrageous lies, and Levitt offered publicly to pay colleagues if they would humiliate Plaintiff for Levitt."

I stress that any evidence for these allegations has not been presented in court, let alone adjudicated.

But I, for one, would very much like to hear what John has.

Notes.

1. The motion I've quoted from is publicly available. To access it, one must register for the federal government's PACER system. At least when I offered credit card information, registration was easy and quick. After registering, go to the site for the federal district court for the Northern District of Illinois. Click on "ECF/PACER access". Click on "Query". Then enter case number "1:06cv2007". Run the query. Click on "History/Documents" and run the query again. The first quote above was taken from Document 60, "Main Document" and the second quote was taken from Document 60, "Exhibit Corrected". Please note that the government will charge you $.08 per page that you download to your computer.

2. John and I were classmates in graduate school at UCLA, and he is a friend.