Rather's Suit Against CBS Terminated By NY Court of Appeals

Dan Rather will not pass go and he will not get a chance to collect $70 million from CBS on his lawsuit against CBS claiming that CBS violated his employment contract. The Court of Appeals (New York's top court) upheld the Appellate Division's ruling in dismissing the case, meaning that Rather's out of luck.

The decision by the Court of Appeals upholds a September Appellate Division ruling that threw out the suit in which Rather disputed his removal as anchor of the "CBS Evening News."

The folksy Rather filed suit in 2007, saying he was bounced as an anchor and sidelined as a "60 Minutes" correspondent over a disputed 2004 report about President George W. Bush's Vietnam-era military service.

Rather claimed CBS suits were trying to make nice with the Republicans by taking him off the air.

A CBS spokeswoman said the network is pleased with the decision, while a lawyer for Rather did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rather had proffered a bogus story just days before the 2004 election using bogus documents claiming that President Bush had avoided his military service obligations in the Texas Air National Guard. The documents were shown to be bogus and created using modern computers and could not have been produced by the typewriters at the time but Rather continued to claim that they were fake, but accurate.

The motion to appeal was denied in a one sentence summation here.

Motion for leave to appeal denied with
one hundred dollars costs and necessary reproduction disbursements.