Nunc est bibendum …
Final Victory in the Mermelstein Case
IHR Prevails in Eleven-Year-Old Legal Battle
At long last, the costly and potentially devastating eleven-year effort by Holocaust personality Mel Mermelstein to destroy the Institute for Historical Review has ended in complete, definitive victory for the IHR and its co-defendants.
Plaintiff Mermelstein let elapse the 30-day deadline for acting on the decisive rejection of his appeal on October 28, 1992, by the California Court of Appeal, thus precluding any further legal steps on his part in the case.
As reported in the previous issue of the Journal (Jan.-Feb., p. 7), Mermelstein’s appeal challenged the dismissal on September 19, 1991, by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Steven Lachs of the plaintiff’s complaint of malicious prosecution. The other components of his suit — complaints for libel, conspiracy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress — were dismissed by Mermelstein himself at that time.
In his suit against the IHR and its co-defendants — the Washington, DC-based populist advocacy group Liberty Lobby and IHR founder Willis Carto — plaintiff Mermelstein had sought $11 million in damages. (For more on the IHR’s 1991 legal victory, see the IHR Newsletter, October 1991.)
The victorious conclusion of the second Mermelstein case finishes, we at the IHR hope, the time-consuming legal struggle that began in 1981. (Theodore O’Keefe’s book on the Mermelstein affair, Best Witness, should be available later this year.)
Our triumph, which is a victory for the worldwide revisionist movement, preserves the IHR as the world leader in Revisionist research and publishing, and as a citadel of support for Revisionists in lands not blessed with our constitutional right of freedom of speech.
To you, our loyal supporters through the most desperate and dispiriting days of the Mermelstein affair, without whose help in the form of contributions, research help, advice, encouragement, and prayers the second Mermelstein case could never have been won, our most sincere thanks.
From The Journal of Historical Review, March/April 1993 (Vol. 13, No. 2), page 13.