Lawyer Loses Defamation Appeal Against Barron’s, Journalists

Barron’s parent Dow Jones & Co. and an independent journalist held onto a win in a defamation case brought by a securities lawyer.

Harvey Kesner alleged that Barron’s defamed him when it accused him of securities fraud in a October 2018 article by William Alpert, “The Lawyer at the Center of the SEC Pump-and-Dump Case.”

But the assertions in the Barron’s article went no further than those in a malpractice suit filed against Kesner, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in an unpublished opinion. The case was therefore rightly dismissed under New York’s fair-report privilege, which ...