Recently in Malicious Litigation Category

Former "Riverdance" star Michael Flatley can proceed with a $100 million extortion and defamation lawsuit against Tyna Marie Robertson who falsely claimed he raped her in Las Vegas. Flatley won an Illinois State Supreme Court ruling that he is allowed to sue and the case can proceed to trial.

According to court papers, the 48-year old dancer received a letter from Robertson's attorney D. Dean Mauro in January 2003 alleging that Flatley had raped Robertson the previous year in a Las Vegas hotel, where Flatley was appearing in a show.

Court papers state that Mauro threatened in the letter, and later during phone calls, that he would file a sexual assault lawsuit unless Flatley agreed to a "seven figures settlement." Police declined to press criminal charges and Flatley said the sex was consensual.

A Superior Court judge at Middletown has awarded $ 3.5 million in damages to Ajai Bhatia, whose former fiancee falsely accused him of sexually abusing their daughter during a bitter custody dispute five years ago.

The accusations cost Bhatia his $100,000-a-year engineering job and his house, and caused him to spend tens of thousands of dollars in a prolonged legal battle to clear his name.

Bhatia faced the humiliation of being escorted out of his office at Pitney-Bowes, Shelton in handcuffs, accused of being a pedophile. He spent four days in jail. He endured a long criminal trial, was acquitted of sexual assault charges resulting from his fiancée's complaint and has been the subject of multiple child-abuse investigations involving the state Department of Children and Families.

Now the large monetary award is little solace to Bhatia, who believes that he will probably never recover anywhere near that amount from his former fiancée, Marlene Debek of Bridgeport. And the accusations have damaged his relationship with his daughter, now 9.

Superior Court Judge Julia L. Aurigemma found that Debek had no probable cause to accuse Bhatia of a crime. "She did so with malice in that her motive was to harm the plaintiff and keep him from having any contact with their daughter," Aurigemma wrote. "In the custody battle, Ms. Debek used the claim of sexual abuse as the final weapon in her arsenal against Mr. Bhatia when her other weapons, false-claims of physical violence and danger of [his] flight to India, were not effective."

Aurigemma awarded Bhatia $2.5 million in damages for his emotional distress, loss of reputation and humiliation, which she said was "staggering."

"It is difficult to imagine anything worse than being falsely accused of sexually assaulting your own child and having the accuser brainwash the child into believing the false allegations," Aurigemma wrote in her ruling.

The judge gave Bhatia an additional $500,000 for his loss of income, $410,000 in punitive damages and $130,000 for attorney's fees from his initial criminal trial. Bhatia was represented in the malicious prosecution case by New Haven attorney John R. Williams.

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