Joseph Winski, the Advertising Age writer fighting a multimillion-dollar libel suit, returned to the witness stand Wednesday and spent the day defending his reporting techniques amid blistering cross-examination by an attorney for Richard E. Meyer, former chief of the Jovan fragrance company.
Under questioning by John N. Touhy, one of Meyer`s attorneys, the bespectacled business reporter took a federal jury through a nearly line-by-line analysis of his hard-hitting profile of Meyer, which appeared in the Oct. 17, 1988, edition of Advertising Age.
Surrounded by blowups of excerpts from the 1988 article for the jury to read, Touhy explored what sources, documents and interviews had led Winski to assert that Meyer used cocaine at management meetings, that he drank until the early hours and that he was mean-spirited, and to make similar assertions that Meyer contends are recklessly false and libelous.
Winski was called as an adverse witness by Touhy and Patrick W. O`Brien, attorneys pressing Meyer`s suit against Winski and Crain Communications Inc., the owner of Advertising Age and nearly a dozen other business publications. Winski, who finished the cross-examination Wednesday, will return to the stand Thursday to will undergo direct questioning by David Sander, who is defending Winski with Anton R. Valukas, the former U.S. attorney.
Meyer, who now lives in Cincinnati, filed suit in 1988, about a month after Winski`s article appeared in Ad Age. The former perfume executive testified earlier in the trial that wealthy investors backed off from promises to provide him with venture capital and that potential employers refused to interview him after the article appeared.
Now in its third week, the trial has been marked by flareups between attorneys for the two sides, who have accused each other of engaging in sandbagging tactics, and between lawyers and some of the witnesses.
The undercurrent of hostility returned Wednesday as Touhy, sometimes in a sneering tone, suggested repeatedly that Winski had played fast and loose with the facts to get his Meyer piece on the front page.
At one point, Touhy elicited from Winski the statement that David Miller, a former top Jovan executive fired by Meyer, confided to Winski that Meyer snorted cocaine during Jovan management meetings in the early `80s. Winksi included that claim in his article, but under questioning by Touhy Wednesday the witness conceded that he did not include in the article Miller`s further claim that ”I can`t ever say that I did actually see” Meyer using cocaine.
Earlier in the trial, a deposition from Miller was read into the record. In his statement, Miller stated flatly that Winski`s article ”accurately portrayed” Miller`s statements to the author about Meyer`s use of the drug.
