Robert S. Rifkind, who performed a pivotal position in effectively protecting Time mag towards a $50 million libel go well with filed by way of Ariel Sharon, the previous Israeli normal, protection minister and later top minister, died on March 12 at his house in Ny. He used to be 88.
The reason used to be headaches of myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular illness, his daughter Amy Rifkind stated.
Mr. Sharon’s go well with used to be brought on by way of a unmarried paragraph within the Feb. 21, 1983, factor of Time. It referred to an Israeli govt record at the bloodbath months previous by way of Christian Phalange militiamen of a minimum of 800 and as many as 3,500 civilian refugees, most commonly Palestinians, within the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. The bloodbath took place after Israel invaded Lebanon and the rustic’s president-elect, Bashir Gemayel, the Phalange chief, used to be assassinated.
The object instructed that Mr. Sharon had for my part mentioned retribution with Mr. Gemayel’s circle of relatives, and that the Israelis regarded the wrong way when the Phalangists extracted their revenge.
A jury found in 1985 that Time had misrepresented Mr. Sharon’s position within the massacre. However the jury concluded that the mag’s reporting didn’t meet the prison threshold for libel in the USA as it didn’t post the item with precise malice or a reckless fail to remember for the information.
An Israeli fee’s damning conclusions that Israeli forces didn’t prevent the bloodbath resulted in Mr. Sharon’s resignation as protection minister. However the fee’s record didn’t say that Mr. Sharon himself had discussed revenge to the Gemayel circle of relatives.
“The case is in reality now not about libel, however a political software within the plaintiff’s fingers,” Mr. Rifkind, whose legislation company, Cravath, Swaine & Moore, represented Time, stated whilst the go well with used to be pending. “A pitched combat by which David, the Israeli struggle hero, smites Goliath, the American company massive, is excellent political fodder.”
Mr. Sharon, who later turned into the top minister of Israel, declared victory, of varieties, for the reason that jury discovered that Time had acted “negligently and carelessly” in publishing the disputed paragraph. The case value the mag thousands and thousands in prison charges.
“Rifkind used to be a very good attorney, who argued most of the motions, and did an admirable process,” U.S. District Courtroom Pass judgement on Abraham D. Sofaer, who presided over the case, stated this week in an electronic mail.
When the lead protection attorney, Thomas D. Barr, used to be unwell and the Time govt who used to be tracking the case used to be abroad, and with Mr. Sharon short of to go back to Israel to marketing campaign for place of work, Mr. Rifkind negotiated a proposed agreement of the lawsuit at the foundation of a ready observation.
“The observation didn’t come with any fee and even an apology,” Pass judgement on Sofaer recalled. “It merely stated that Time didn’t intend to put across that Sharon had given permission for the murders. Rifkind had certainly secured a extremely favorable end result within the case. Sharon used to be bored with the litigation and gave his political existence a better precedence.”
Time, on the other hand, assured of a good verdict, rejected the proposal. The following discovering that the mag were negligent — although now not malicious — strengthened Mr. Sharon’s case when he sued Time in Israel, the place the malice same old didn’t practice, and gained a agreement there.
The case brought about a sensation in the USA and the Heart East for its political implications and its affect at the media trade.
Mr. Rifkind figured in numerous different primary instances, together with a a hit protection of the 1964 Balloting Rights Act when he used to be assistant to the U.S. solicitor normal on the time, Thurgood Marshall, a publish he held from 1965 to 1968.
Mr. Rifkind argued a number of instances ahead of the Ideally suited Courtroom. He used to be taken with Miranda v. Arizona, the 1966 case that established that cops should tell suspects in their constitutional rights ahead of wondering. He labored on South Carolina v. Katzenbach, by which the Ideally suited Courtroom dominated in 1966 that federal intervention to let eligible citizens of particular person states check in and vote used to be constitutional below the fifteenth Modification. (Nicholas Katzenbach used to be the U.S. legal professional normal.) And he represented New York Town voluntarily, or professional bono, in court cases within the Nineteen Eighties and ‘90s difficult the federal decennial census as a result of what town stated used to be an undercount.
Mr. Rifkind used to be additionally taken with Jewish affairs. He served as president of the American Jewish Committee from 1994 to 1998.
“Bob Rifkind used to be what all legal professionals aspire to be,” stated Evan R. Chesler, Cravath’s former presiding spouse and chairman. “He used to be sensible, had an imposing command of the language and used to be unfailingly courteous to all those that labored for, with and towards him.”
Robert Singer Rifkind used to be born on Aug. 31, 1936, in Ny to Adele (Singer) and Simon H. Rifkind. His father, used to be a federal pass judgement on and later a spouse within the company that turned into referred to as Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in 1950, 4 years after it used to be based.
Bob Rifkind graduated from the Loomis Faculty (now the Loomis Chaffee Faculty) in Windsor, Conn., and earned a bachelor’s level in historical past from Yale Faculty in 1958 and a juris physician level from Harvard College Legislation Faculty in 1961.
He joined Cravath the following 12 months and, with the exception of for his stint with the solicitor normal in Washington, remained with the company till he retired in 2001. He had senior suggest standing after retiring as a litigator.
In 1961, he married Arlene Brenner; she died in 2021. Along with his daughter Amy, he’s survived by way of every other daughter, Nina Rifkind, and 5 grandchildren.
His daughters, each legal professionals, invoked their grandfather this week in a letter to Brad Karp, the chairman of Paul, Weiss, in which they publicly criticized the company’s choice to devote $40 million in professional bono prison services and products for reasons President Trump championed if the White Space rescinded an govt order that may have suspended Paul, Weiss’s safety clearances and prohibited its legal professionals from getting into federal constructions.