'Misha' Case Dismissed

by Judith Rosen -- Publishers Weekly, 10/9/2008 2:26:00 PM

Jane Daniel has lost her bid to overturn a $33 million judgment against her and her one-person publishing house, Mt. Ivy Press, by Misha Defonseca, author of Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, and ghostwriter Vera Lee for inadequately promoting the book and hiding money in an offshore account.

Despite Defonseca admitting earlier this year that the book is a hoax and she isn’t even Jewish, on Tuesday Middlesex (Massachusetts) Superior Court Judge Timothy Feeley dismissed the case, which was filed in April, because it was filed after the one-year statute of limitations. He rejected Daniel’s claim that the statute of limitations did not apply because Defonseca perpetrated a hoax on the court.

Daniel’s attorney told the Associated Press that he plans to appeal the ruling.