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Ex-radio hosts face lawsuit
J.R. Gach, sidekick accused of ridiculing burn victim on air

By ROBERT GAVIN, Staff writer
First published: Thursday, December 6, 2007

ALBANY -- Two radio personalities are being sued in state Supreme Court for repeatedly mocking a burn victim during their morning talk show almost two years ago.
Shock jock J.R. Gach and sidekick Shawn Bolts identified the woman as "Suzie Burns" and other offensive nicknames, and called her family's restaurant the "genetic mutant diner," court papers said.
     
"I was crying hysterically," said Athena Andrikopoulos, 25, of Guilderland, as she testified Wednesday before Justice John Egan and the jury. "I was outraged that an adult would act this way."
She did not hear the Feb. 15, 2006, broadcast until that June, but learned of it days after it aired on the former "JR in the Morning" program on WRCZ (94.5 FM).
Andrikopoulos was never identified by name, nor was her family's business, the Redwood Diner in Rotterdam, during the four-hour show. But Gash and Bolts called it the "Wormwood Diner" and noted its location on Hamburg Street, where there are no other diners, according to the lawsuit, which makes no specific monetary damages claim.
Andrikopoulos testified that she lost 13 pounds in two weeks and could not sleep for days because of the show. She was so upset, she said, she canceled plans to live with friends in Massachusetts and doesn't know what her future holds.
"It's always in the back of my mind," said the woman, who suffered burns as a child.
The shock jocks focused on Andrikopoulos after Bolts mentioned he had eaten at the diner. In addition, the radio personalities called her a "freak" and "hideous," court papers said.
Andrikopoulos and her family also are suing the station's operators, Galaxy Communications, claiming severe emotional distress.
Gach's show has since dropped off the air. John Lynch, a New York City attorney representing the radio personalities, and John McGowan, a lawyer for the Syracuse-based Galaxy, declined comment.

http://www.dailygazette.com

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Woman ridiculed on radio show reaches $1M settlement
BY JILL BRYCE Gazette Reporter

    Athena Andrikopoulos said she’s “totally gung-ho about free speech.”
    But when two shock jocks insulted her to her very core, blasting how she looked because of burns she had suffered on her body as a young girl, she drew the line.
    “There is a limit to what you say. They drew the line between human decency and going too far.”
    On Thursday, a $1 million settlement was reached after Andrikopoulos, of Schenectady, took the two radio personalities to court, claiming they inflicted severe emotional distress on her.
    The settlement before state Supreme Court Judge John Egan in Albany County came a day shy of Andrikopoulos’ 26th birthday.
    Andrikopoulos had testified Wednesday in state Supreme Court about how humiliated she was when radio personality J.R. Gach and his partner Shawn Bolts insulted her on their morning radio show on Feb. 15, 2006, on WRCZ (94.5 FM).
    “My confidence shot down so low. I had no idea adults acted this way. I was completely hurt and disgusted what they were doing. It took two years of my life away,” said Andrikopoulos. “For them to use my scars as a joke for public attention for the radio, it left me emotionally scarred. I couldn’t get my life on track. They are shock jocks, they are trying to act like Howard Stern. He would never go this extreme. They wanted ratings.”
    Gach’s show is no longer on the air in the Capital Region. Neither he nor his attorney could be reached to comment.
    Andrikopoulos’ case began Feb. 14, 2006. She had returned to work that day at her family’s business, the Redwood Diner on Hamburg Street in Rotterdam, where she’s worked since she was 10 years old.
    She had just undergone plastic surgery on her lips and chin and was still a little swollen from the procedure.
    A radio personality from WRCZ, known as Pi, came into the diner and went back to the station and apparently told some people about Andrikopoulos’ appearance.
    On the Feb. 15 broadcast, Gach and Bolts said horrific things about her on their show, said Andrikopoulos.
    “They called our family diner the Wormwood Diner on Hamburg Street and they kept poking fun at me, saying I was a mutant and that the roast beef sandwiches were made from skin grafts. They kept calling me Suzy Burns. That’s how they referred to me the whole show.”
    She didn’t hear the broadcast that day, but her brother, who was working, got a call from a family friend, who told him Gach and Bolts were talking about the diner and his little sister.
    “They waited two days to tell me. When they did tell me and I heard it, I was crying hysterically. I didn’t know what to do. It was my idea to go to an attorney.”
    Andrikopoulos pursued a lawsuit to get back her self-esteem. “It was a blow to my self-esteem. For two years I’ve been trying to get myself back together.”
    When Andrikopoulos was 3 years old, she was climbing on the stove, playing with it “like a piano, pressing buttons.”
    “My dress caught on fire and I suffered burns all over my body,” she said. “It was mostly the front of my body. I dealt with it and accepted and I finally got self confidence.”
    When she heard Gach and Bolts delivering insults, “it blew me to the core,” she said Thursday.
    She said she had wanted to apply for a internship at Shriners Hospital, or get her bachelor’s degree at Siena College, and this set her back from reaching those goals.
    Galaxy Communications, Gach and Bolts moved to dismiss the case before trial. The court denied the motion.
    Andrikopoulos’ attorney, Daniel Centi, said Thursday the lawsuit was based on intentional infliction of severe emotional distress. “She suffered terribly. If you know the content of the radio show it’s not hard to imagine the terrible, terrible suffering,” he said.
    Centi said the segment on Andrikopoulos was played Feb. 15, 2006, on WRCZ and posted on the Internet in segments.
    The trial was into a third day when the settlement was reached Wednesday. Bolts was at the trial every day but did not get to testify. Gach, whose lawyer said he lives in Florida and recently underwent surgery, was not present.
    Centi said this wasn’t a defamation case. “We didn’t claim they attacked her reputation, though they did attack the family diner.”
    He said an entire body of law makes it difficult to bring lawsuits against utterance of words because of First Amendment rights, but this case stood out.
    “When we were approached, we believed it was uniquely horrific. If any case ought to be allowed to stand, it would be this one,” said Centi, of the law firm Feeney, Centi and Mackey.
    Attorney Mike Mackey said the cruelty was motived by ratings. “Galaxy Communications was trying in their own words to “move the needle.’ This morning talk show was trying to fill the void when Howard Stern left and went to satellite.”
    Centi said that Andrikopoulos and her family are trying to recover from the emotional damages they suffered.
    Athena, who was going out to dinner with her family Thursday evening, said Galaxy Communications wanted her to keep quiet after the settlement was reached.
    “I said no, you had an hour when you cut me to the core. I won’t close my mouth.”
    She said she’s not thinking about the money right now, or what she’ll do with it.
    “If I could, I would give it back to them if this never happened.”

     

I just wonder who's going to have to pay this money.  Who knows.

I believe in free speech, but this was crossing the line. I was never a fan of Howard Stern. He insulted my intelligence. And that is who these 2 guys were trying to model themselves after. I'm glad it came back to bite them in the a**!!!

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Cruel words have a price
Burn victim mocked by radio shock jocks ends legal action for $1 million

By ROBERT GAVIN, Staff writer
First published: Friday, December 7, 2007

ROTTERDAM -- For nearly two years, Athena Andrikopoulos didn't get an apology from the radio station that mocked her burn condition during a morning talk show.
     
Now she doesn't want one.
But she will receive a $1 million settlement, under an agreement finalized Thursday in state Supreme Court in Albany. It was reached only hours after the Guilderland woman tearfully testified about the impact of a Feb. 15, 2006, broadcast on the former "JR in the Morning" program on WRCZ (94.5 FM).
"The money didn't mean anything to me," Andrikopoulos, 26, said during a Thursday afternoon interview in her family's business, the Redwood Diner in Rotterdam, where she was joined by her parents and siblings. "They used my scars as a joke just to get ratings. What they got in the end is a girl who is emotionally scarred."
Radio personality J.R. Gach and sidekick Shawn Bolts identified the woman as "Susie Burns" -- and a host of other jaw-dropping monikers -- and labeled her family's restaurant the "genetic mutant diner" during the broadcast.
Gach and Bolts' show has since gone off the air. While Bolts was present during the trial, Gach was believed to be in Florida.
Andrikopoulos and her family sued the shock jocks and their former bosses at the Syracuse-based Galaxy Communications, arguing the broadcast caused her severe emotional distress. The same jury that heard Andrikopoulos testify Wednesday was to decide the case as soon as today. The settlement ended the trial.
John Lynch, a New York City-based lawyer for Gach and Bolts, declined comment when contacted Thursday.
"I deeply regret the entire situation," Ed Levine, the chief executive officer for Galaxy Communications, told the court. "I am happy we are able to resolve it."
When Levine offered an apology this week, Andrikopoulos wouldn't accept it, she said.
And while some advisors suggested she remain quiet, she said, "I want people to know this is going past the line of decency."
The dark-haired Andrikopoulos, a slender woman with piercing blue eyes, was 2 years old when she accidently climbed up on her family's stove and was badly injured. Suffering burns over most of her body, she wasn't expected to survive longer than 48 hours, said her father, Peter Andrikopoulos. He moved to the United States from Greece in 1969 and met his wife, Gloria, after taking over the restaurant where she worked as a waitress.
Three decades later, their daughter has undergone more than 50 surgeries, overcoming odds to play organized sports and earn a degree from Endicott College in Massachusetts. She has also made a network of friends from New England to New Jersey.
Andrikopoulos was recovering from a recent surgery, working as a hostess, when Bolts patronized the restaurant on Valentine's Day 2006. The next morning, the shock jock told Gach about his dining experience, launching a lengthy dialogue that would ultimately get both men slammed with a lawsuit.
"It's really funny, dude," Bolts said, according to a transcript of the broadcast filed with the court. He then joked that he had encountered the "twin sister" of a burn victim they both apparently knew.
"Some burn victim? Some chick all burned up?" Gach asked.
"It's not that I'm -- I'm trying to pick on her," Bolts answered, adding, "It was Burn-neese, right?"
Bolts later said he went "just for laughs," prompting Gach to say, "What, do they got mutants in there? Is it like the -- the genetic mutant restaurant?"
"I couldn't stop myself," Bolts replied. "I walked right in there last night. I went 'Oh, no' ..."
"Hey, open that window. It's ... hot in here," Gach answered.
During the broadcast, the shock jocks called the family business the "Wormwood Diner" and mentioned its Hamburg Street location. They also encouraged people to visit the diner to view "Susie Burns" -- and threatened to photograph her with a cellphone camera and post it on the Internet, the lawsuit noted.
At times the shock jocks would drift to other subjects -- such as Vice President Dick Cheney's then-recent shooting incident -- only to repeatedly focus back on the diner and Andrikopoulos, mentioning neither by name.
"You know we're going to get in trouble now, man," Bolts said at one point.
Gach answered, "Man, come for the freaks and don't stay for the food."
They ended the broadcast playing the Talking Heads tune, "Burning Down the House."
Sitting at a corner table in the diner Thursday, Andrikopoulos' brother, Todd Davis, explained that the family initially did not tell his sister about the show. While she quickly learned about it, she did not listen to the broadcast until June when, according to her testimony, it literally made her vomit.
Her mother, Gloria Andrikopoulos, said the broadcast "blew her mind."
Davis said he supports freedom of speech liberties, but added, "This is going way too far, just bashing someone who has never done anything to anyone. She just came to work."
Donna Lieberman, who heads the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the First Amendment, which protects free speech, is invoked any time courts impose liability for expressive activity. But that does not make speech immune to litigation, she said.
Andrikopoulos is "clearly a private individual" as opposed to a public figure, she said. And while no legal precedent was set, the case "definitely sends a message," she said.
"She's happy that the settlement is of a size that gets the attention of the media and those who especially engage in this type of activity," said Andrikopoulos' lawyer, Dan Centi, who handled the case alongside Michael Mackey.
Andrikopoulos remains upset at both shock jocks -- and the station for not halting the show. She hoped to take classes at Siena College, or work at the Boston Shriner's Hospital, which aids burn victims. Now, she said, she isn't sure what the future holds.
In the courtroom, state Supreme Court Justice John Egan gave the woman encouragement.
"Athena," the judge said, before sending the jury home, "what happened here was wrong. This is a good settlement. You're a good person. You're a beautiful person. And I want you to go out of here with your head held high, all right?"

I've been in Redwood several times and have seen this girl there. She is very sweet and nice and a appears to be a hard worker. I guess these 'shock jocks' forgot to mention that, huh?

That girl has been there since she was a child. Her parents own that diner and she has always been a sweet girl. Why would anyone mock someone like that? I am sure if they had family who was burned in such a way they would not have acted like such morons! They deserve to pay for such ignorance. To mock the diner is one thing, it is dirty and the food is terrible. But don't attack an innocent person who clearly has been through enough as it is. Geez.