Michael Lewis Asks Judge to Dismiss Libel Suit

Thanks to Lincoln for passing this along.

Lawyers for Michael Lewis, the author of “Liar’s Poker” and “Moneyball,” asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit by a bond manager who claimed Lewis’s book about subprime mortgage investing, “The Big Short,” defamed him.

U.S. District Judge George Daniels heard arguments in Manhattan today on Lewis’s motion to dismiss Wing Chau’s libel suit without trial.

“The plaintiffs are limited purpose public figures and the standard of actual malice has not been met,” Celia Barenholtz, a lawyer for Lewis, said. “There’s not an iota of evidence Michael Lewis thought anything he was writing was false.”

Chau owns Morristown, New Jersey-based Harding Advisory LLC, which manages collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, which are often backed by pools of mortgage-backed securities. Chau sued Lewis in 2011, claiming that “The Big Short” made “false and defamatory statements about him” and damaged his reputation in the financial industry.

Chau also sued Lewis’s publisher, New York-based W.W. Norton & Co., and a hedge fund manager, Steven Eisman, who was a principal source of information for Lewis’s book.

The book tells of a group of investors who made fortunes by shorting, or betting against, the residential subprime mortgage market before it collapsed in 2007. Eisman, who managed FrontPoint Partners LLC, was one of those investors.