Gatto v. Capeci [1]

On January 29, 2008, Domenic Gatto and Atlantic Express Transportation Corp. filed a special proceeding in New York Supreme Court, Richmond County, seeking permission to file a sealed lawsuit for defamatioin against Jerry Capeci. Capeci, a former organized crime reporter with The Daily News, runs GangLandNews.com [2], a website devoted to coverage of organized crime. On December 27, 2007, Capeci published an article [3] about Gatto.

In a February 8, 2008 hearing [4] before the court, Gatto's lawyers indicated that Capeci's article made statements linking Gatto to organized crime and republished information from a district attorney's affidavit filed as part of an application for a wiretap warrant. According to Gatto's lawyers, New York law requires affidavits of this kind to be filed under seal (i.e., not open to the public). They argued that the court should bar public access to the court file of Gatto's as-yet-unfiled lawsuit in order to stop the press from repeating the allegations in the (allegedly) improperly leaked affidavit.

The court denied Gatto's request. Gatto appealed, but the appellate division rejected [5]his appeal. It also rejected Capeci's motion [6] requesting that the court sanction Gatto and require him to pay Capeci's attorneys' fees. As of April 11, 2008, Gatto had not filed a complaint or served Capeci.