I had not. Until this, from Ryan Lizza’s hard-punch April 14, 2014 New Yorker article, “Crossing Christie:”
[Chris] Christie lowered his expectations and, for his second [political] campaign, ran for freeholder. This time, he was a reform candidate, promising to restore honest government, and he produced a TV ad charging that three of his opponents in the non-person Republican primary were being “investigated by the Morris County prosecutor,” a serious accusation that happened to be false. Christie won the primary and then the general election, in part by assuring a more socially moderate electorate, “I am pro-choice.” But his victory was married by the divisiveness of his campaign. The three victims of Christie’s false ad, including a freeholder named Cecilia Laureys, successfully sued him for defamation, and, after he lost an appeal, as part of the settlement he was forced to apologize to them in local newspapers. Laureys died last July, but her son, Christopher, who was her communications directors, told me, “This was beyond the pale of what anyone had ever done in politics in Morris County. He was a lawyer who said they were being criminally investigated. He looked into the camera and lied.”
Which brings up my question: did Christopher Laureys or someone else file a grievance in the applicable New Jersey Disciplinary Committee? Because a lawyer who lies − and loses a lawsuit over that lie − should have his law license suspended, if not revoked.