THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 15, 1994 TAG: 9412150368
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B14 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
A federal magistrate says he will rule in January whether to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a bowling alley's owners over Sports Illustrated's article on a brawl involving basketball star Allen Iverson.
But David M. Montague, the attorney for the owners of Circle Lanes Inc., said after a hearing Tuesday that he does not expect a favorable decision. ``I think we need to wait and see what the judge has to say, but . . . I'm not real optimistic,'' Montague said.
The same judge, U.S. Magistrate James E. Bradberry, dismissed a nearly identical case against the magazine's publisher, Time Inc., eight months ago, involving the same article. In that case, Montague was representing Julia Weaver, an employee of the bowling alley where the brawl occurred on Valentine's Day 1993.
Weaver, a Hampton resident, wasn't mentioned by name in the Oct. 25, 1993, article by then-Sports Illustrated writer Ned Zeman. But she contended the magazine libelously portrayed her as a racist in saying she gave a lane against a far wall to Iverson, who is black, and a group of his friends.
Owners Jeff Sweeney of Colonial Heights and Fred Bowker of Manassas, whose business has changed its name to SpareTimes, filed a $700,000 lawsuit against Zeman and Time in October. Their suit contends the article capitalized on racial tensions surrounding the brawl and defamed and hurt their business.
After the article was published, Sports Illustrated carried a correction and an apology that acknowledged errors, including the information about the location of the lane given to Iverson and his friends. David J. Branson, Time's attorney, said that if the article wasn't defamatory in Weaver's case, the same words couldn't defame the bowling business.
But Montague argued that the article suggested Circle Lanes was a racist business and that Iverson's group was ``racially put down from the very beginning.''
Bradberry said the article clearly had Zeman's ``spin'' on the chair-throwing melee that erupted between Iverson's group and white patrons. But he said that ``spin'' didn't qualify it as libel.
``There was no suggestion that the young people who went to the alley got anything other than a lane they could use,'' he said.
Iverson, a 6-foot-tall point guard who is a freshman at Georgetown, was a high school junior at the time. He was convicted of mob violence and sentenced to five years in prison. He was released a year ago by former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder to finish high school. by CNB