Possible Settlement in Stuart, Wynn Suit

After more than seven years of litigation, the defamation lawsuit filed against Barricade Books and its 81-year-old maverick publisher, Lyle Stuart, by Las Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn may be on the verge of a settlement.

David Blasband, Stuart's lawyer, told PW that he was in "settlement discussions" with Wynn's attorneys and added that he was "optimistic" about reaching an agreement. The suit was originally filed in 1995 by Wynn, who charged that he was defamed in the catalogue copy for the book Running Scared by John L. Smith, which suggested that a Scotland Yard report had linked Wynn to organized crime. Wynn won a $3.2-million libel judgment against Barricade Books in 1997 that was subsequently reversed by the Nevada State Supreme Court in 2001. The court sent the suit back to the district court for a new trial, which, barring a settlement, is scheduled to start in early September.

Barricade has gone through a number of changes while fighting the lawsuit. Following the $3.2-million judgment, the house was forced to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy and lay off employees in order to keep publishing. In 2000, the house moved from Manhattan to cheaper office space in Fort Lee, N.J.

Barricade came out of bankruptcy after the judgment was reversed, said Stuart. And despite his run-ins with courts, Stuart, the publisher of The Anarchist Cookbook and The Turner Diaries, still "specializes in controversy." In April, Barricade published Conversations with a Pedophile: In the Interest of Our Children by Amy Hammel-Zabin. The current list is dominated by reprint editions of a number of former controversial bestsellers, such as Helen Gurley Brown's prefeminist bestseller, Sex and the Single Girl, originally published in 1962, and Naked Came the Stranger, originally published in 1969, which is due out in August. The house now publishes about 20 books a year, down from about 40 books a year before the lawsuit, and employs about 10 people.