Among the first stories California Watch published early last year was a piece by Lance Williams about how Alaska company Suulutaaq obtained a $54 million federal stimulus contract to relocate the Napa Valley Wine Train’s tracks. The company went out and hired Washington power firm Patton Boggs to represent it, and filed a defamation suit even though it never identified any factual errors or asked for a correction. Add: California Watch always stood by its story. Now, as Mark Katches, director of the Center for Investigative Reporting, CW’s parent, posts tonight, Suulutaaq has dropped its lawsuit. It won’t collect a nickel. Writes Katches:
“To this day, we can’t quite figure out why they sued us. Maybe they thought a small nonprofit would be intimidated by a company with deep pockets that had hired a high-powered law firm to come after us. But that was never going to be the case here.”
