In the sequel to a bitter divorce battle, a federal judge has ruled that a Kentucky law professor did not defame her ex-husband by accusing him of adultery in a book about their troubled marriage.

Sharlene Lassiter, who teaches at Northern Kentucky University, describes in “I Have a Testimony” how she used faith and the power of prayer to survive her marriage to Christo Lassiter, a law professor at the University of Cincinnati. The couple divorced in 2001 after five years of litigation.

“The book is primarily of an inspirational and religious nature,” U.S. District Judge William O. Bertelsman noted.

It certainly inspired Christo Lassiter to file a libel action. His ex-wife defamed him, he complained, by alleging in the book that he had “an adulterous affair with one of his students” and that each time she asked God if he was committing adultery, “Each answer was the same. Yes.”

Bertelsman, who conducted a bench trial, said Sharlene Lassiter “did not meet her burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that the adultery allegations were true.” But he entered judgment for the defendant, saying the allegations were “statements of protected opinion under Kentucky law.”

Kentucky has adopted the position that a statement of opinion is actionable “only if it implies the allegation of undisclosed defamatory facts as the basis of the opinion.”

According to Bertelsman, the evidence at trial showed that Sharlene Lassiter “arrived at the conclusion that the plaintiff committed adultery on the basis of rumor and circumstantial evidence that was persuasive to her.” The allegations, therefore, “fit the definition of 'pure opinion,'” the judge concluded in his order, since

The book discloses the facts on which the opinion was based. The conclusion was denied by the plaintiff, but the existence of the rumors and the facts comprising the circumstantial evidence were not. The reader is in as good a position as the author to judge whether the conclusion she reached -- that adultery had been committed –- was correct.

Bertelsman also said Sharlene Lassiter proved the truth of allegations that her ex-husband physically abused her. Christo Lassiter made only “a general denial,” he ruled, and “The sincerity of the defendant was obvious to the court.”

By Matthew Heller
10/8/06