NEW YORK, Dec 23 (Reuters) – Billionaire hedge fund manager Louis Bacon has won his long-running lawsuit alleging that former fashion mogul and convicted sex offender Peter Nygard defamed him by calling him a murderer, drug trafficker and member of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan.
Justice Richard Latin in Manhattan said in an order on Monday that Nygard had admitted he had no evidence to back up his claims against Bacon, the founder of Moore Capital Management LP in New York.
Nygard and Bacon’s lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
Nygard, the founder of Nygard International, who was once one of Canada’s richest men, is serving an 11-year prison sentence in Canada for sexual assault.
Bacon and Nygard were neighbors in an exclusive gated community in the Bahamas and became embroiled in a bitter dispute over Nygard’s efforts to expand his property, which Bacon opposed.
In his lawsuit filed in 2015, Bacon accused Nygard of orchestrating an obsessive and malicious smear campaign against him that included doctored YouTube videos and organized street rallies against Bacon.
The lawsuit said Nygard falsely claimed that Bacon murdered multiple people, was charged by prosecutors in a billion-dollar insider trading case, was a white supremacist, smuggled narcotics and fugitives, possessed terrorist weaponry, committed arson and bribed Bahamian officials.
Nygard was found guilty by a Toronto jury on four counts of sexual assault in 2023. He was acquitted of a fifth count of sexual assault and one count of forcible confinement.
(Reporting by Jack Queen in New YorkEditing by Rod Nickel)
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