Posted October 20, 2003.

Librarian’s Libel Suit over Primary Colors Dismissed

A Manhattan court has dismissed a $100-million libel lawsuit brought in 1996 by librarian Daria Carter-Clark against the author and publisher of the 1996 best-selling novel Primary Colors. The suit contended that Carter-Clark was recognizable as the character Ms. Baum in the Random House spoof by Joe Klein about President Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. Baum, a fictional Harlem adult-literacy-program coordinator, is portrayed as being sexually intimate with Clinton-esque protagonist Jack Stanton. Carter-Clark was a site advisor to a Harlem library that Clinton visited in 1991 during a campaign stop.

“The reliance by [Carter-Clark] on minimal superficial similarities between her and Baum, and speculative gossip by some people who knew plaintiff” was insufficient to justify the suit, Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Richard F. Braun ruled. He also noted that whatever the similarities, they are “inadequate for a reader, even one who knows plaintiff, to reasonably believe that the characterization of Baum in Primary Colors was ’of and concerning’ plaintiff.”

Defense counsel Elizabeth A. McNamara said in the October 6 New York Law Journal, “No one disputes that this book was inspired by real life as most works of fiction are, but that doesn’t change the fact that at the end of the day this is a work of fiction.”

In a prior motion, Carter-Clark and the defendants agreed that she had never had intimate relations with the president, which made testimony from Clinton unnecessary.

Posted October 20, 2003.