No dice, said N.Y. Civil Court judge Shahabuddeen Ally on Friday, in Travis v. Daily Mail:
Defendants … are alleged by plaintiff to have defamed her in the course of its ongoing coverage of former Governor Eliot Spitzer. As has been highly publicized by numerous media publications over the course of the last several years, the former Governor became embroiled in a series of scandals arising from claims that he regularly engaged escort services, and later, allegations of sexual assault perpetrated against plaintiff.
Of relevance to this action is the description of plaintiff as a "prostitute" in an article published by the Daily Mail on January 24, 2022, entitled Former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer used alias, 'George Fox' at the hospital when he checked in on 25-year-old Russian prostitute lover he was accused of choking in $1,000-a-night Plaza hotel room in 2016. Plaintiff contends that contrary to the Daily Mail's coverage, she has never engaged in prostitution or similar occupation and that her involvement with former Governor Spitzer was limited to a legal dispute over the alleged sexual assault….
[D]efendants have provided an article published October 7, 2014 on the online outlet Medium. Entitled Sex is Sex, but Money is Money and under the byline "Svetlana Z.," the piece describes in detail the lifestyle and experiences of a high-end escort told from a first-person perspective. The author biography describes Svetlana Z. as "a 24-year-old former escort living in New York City," and also contend based upon the reporting of another media outlet and review of court records that plaintiff was evicted from her apartment on Lexington Avenue in 2015 for engaging in prostitution.
