Dan Rather's Lawsuit Thrown Out of Court

A little over two years after Dan Rather filed a breach of contract and fraud lawsuit against his former employers at CBS, New York Supreme Court's appellate division has thrown out the case.

Rather had been seeking $70 million from CBS (he named CBS, Viacom, Les Moonves, Sumner Redstone and Andrew Heyward, in his filing according to the New York Observer's Felix Gillette), claiming that CBS News wronged him after a 2004 60 Minutes Wednesday report on then-President George W. Bush's Texas Air National Guard service was determined to have used allegedly false documents. Shortly following the broadcast, Rather said in a statement that, "after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically." In a CBS News statement at the time, Andrew Heyward called the use of the documents was called "a mistake."

The CBS Evening News anchorman resigned in November 2005. (Several producers who worked on the 60 Minutes Wednesday segment resigned or were fired earlier; 60 Minutes Wednesday was canceled in 2005.)

Rather's lawyer, Martin R. Gold, said in a widely-quoted statement, "We are extremely disappointed with the Appellate Court’s decision. We believe the decision is incorrect on a number of grounds and, accordingly, we intend to ask the New York Court of Appeals to review it."