Maccaba vs. Lichtenstein

Submitted by Josephine Bacon (United Kingdom), Apr 22, 2013 at 03:04

To answer your questions about the longest slander trial in British legal history, at which I was an expert witness on behalf of Maccaba:

1) As an expert witness I had to be kept distant from the case management so I do not know if there were objections to the judge's ruling. The lawyers I was working for were Addleshaw Goddard, the other side was a solicitor-advocate, I can't remember his name at the moment, his office is right opposite the court. There certainly ought to have been an objection from our side because the other side brought in some rabbi to claim that "ne'ouf" does NOT mean adultery! Yes, and shahor means white, I suppose! How anyone, let alone a rabbi, and Lichtenstein of course, could lie so blatantly in court is beyond me. The fact that no one on the jury spoke Hebrew is almost certainly the reason they found for the defendant, after all, how can an English jury tell if a slander is a slander if it is not said in English? Just one Hebrew-speaker on the jury would have reversed the decision. And, as a religious Jew yourself, you know that for a dayan to engage in "rekhilut" as Lichtenstein did, is a crime in itself as far as a Bet Din would be concerned, but of course like all these "machers" he has gotten off scott free.

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