Spitzer sued for libel over year-old Slate magazine column

Eliot Spitzer and Slate have been slapped with a pair of multimillion-dollar lawsuits over a 2010 column the former New York governor and erstwhile CNN host wrote for the online magazine.

The lawsuits--filed Friday by two former Marsh & McLennan executives prosecuted by Spitzer when he was New York attorney general--claim his August 22, 2010 column, "They Still Don't Get It," defamed them. The two insurance executives, William Gilman and Edward McNenney, whose convictions on various corruption charges were thrown out by a judge in July 2010, now seek $60 million and $30 million, respectively.

The litigation, according to Reuters, alleges that Spitzer defamed the men by writing, "Marsh's behavior was a blatant abuse of law and market power: price-fixing, bid-rigging and kickbacks all designed to harm their customers and the market while Marsh and its employees pocketed the increased fees and kickbacks."

Spitzer, whose primetime talk show—"In the Arena"—was canceled by CNN last month, called the lawsuits "entirely frivolous"; Slate editor David Plotz told the New York Times that the claims are "baseless" and that the company is "looking forward to defending" itself.