Christopher Peak Photo
Rabbi Daniel Greer outside federal court during his trial
A prominent Edgewood rabbi is asking a court to throw out a $20 million verdict against him and order a new trial on sexual abuse allegations.
Attorney David Grudberg filed the motion Wednesday in U.S. District Court on behalf of the rabbi, Daniel Greer.
A federal jury last month awarded a former yeshiva student named Eliyahu Mirlis $15 million in damages, and his lawyers another $5 million, based on testimony that Greer repeatedly sexually abused him and another student over a period of years.
Grudberg’s motion asks the court the court either to throw out the case and order a new trial; or, barring that, reduce the award to under $1 million.
Click here to read the full motion.
In his motion, Grudberg writes that Mirlis provided too little evidence of actual sexual abuse, and relied on non-credible testimony about post-traumatic stress syndrome, to prove his case. (Greer’s legal team made similar arguments at trial.)
Even if the judge doesn’t buy the scant-testimony argument, a new trial is warranted because of “the history of awards in comparable cases,” which tend to range between $500,000 and $3 million, Grudberg writes. He called the award “unprecedented.”
Grudberg argues that “strong emotions” about sexual abuse and prejudices about the fact that Greer repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination on the stand the case “ignited” a “volatile tinderbox” that produced an out-of-whack award.
“This is yet another attempt by this so-called ‘rabbi’ to evade the consequences of his predatory abuse and molestation of children. As with his previous efforts, this will fail,” Mirlis’s attorney, Antonio Ponvert III of Bridgeport’s Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, responded in an email message to the Independent. “Mr. Greer has shown nothing but contempt and arrogance since the inception of this case. But the world now knows him for the monster he is; and he will be punished.”
Previous coverage of this case:
• Suit: Rabbi Molested, Raped Students
• Greer’s Housing Corporations Added To Sex Abuse Lawsuit
• 2nd Ex-Student Accuses Rabbi Of Sex Assault
• 2nd Rabbi Accuser Details Alleged Abuse
• Rabbi Sexual Abuse Jury Picked
• On Stand, Greer Invokes 5th On Sex Abuse
• Rabbi Seeks To Bar Blogger from Court
• Trial Mines How Victims Process Trauma
• Wife, Secretary Come To Rabbi Greer’s Defense
• Jury Awards $20M In Rabbi Sex Case
• State Investigates Greer Yeshiva’s Licensing