Via Greg Sargent, Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos has now sued polling firm Research 2000 for allegedly “fraudulently manufacturing phony results.”
Kos’ lawyer, Adam Bonin, confirmed to TPMmuckraker that the suit was filed late yesterday. Del Ali of Research 2000, who has vehemently denied Kos’ claims, told us this morning that he has not yet seen the suit. (For more on the backstory, check out our past coverage.)
The suit, which you can read below, alleges breach of contract, unfair business practices, breach of implied warranty, intentional misrepresentation, negligent misrepresentation, constructive fraud, and conversion.
Greg has more on what’s in the suit.
Of particular interest is Kos’ narrative of what happened when he confronted Ali with statistical analysis that he says shows R2K polls are “bunk.” Among other things, Ali claimed he couldn’t access his email because he was forced to work out of a Kinko’s and the “Computer Geeks cannot do anything until tomorrow morning”:
28. Additionally, the week-to-week variance in favorability for politicians polled demonstrated a distribution far outside the expected ranges and far outside the ranges demonstrated by other polling firms, strongly indicating that Research 2000’s numbers were not generated by independent polling but by falsification of data in whole or in part.
29. On Monday, June 14, 2010, Moulitsas approached Ali with his concerns. In response, Ali promised via email on that date to provide Moulitsas with the raw data from which the polling results were constructed to verify their validity.
30. On Wednesday, June 16, 2010, Ali emailed Moulitsas with regards to the raw data, stating that “you can expect it either Friday, if not, no later than Monday.”
31. On Monday, June 21, Ali again stalled, emailing Moulitsas to state: “I am at a Kinkos computer because we cannot read any mail from our PC,s [sic] and cannot attached [sic] any documents or files to send. Reading email from my cell. Just got to a Kinkos. Computer Geeks cannot do anything until tomorrow morning.”
32. As of this date, Wednesday June 30, 2010, despite numerous requests from Moulitsas and purported commitments from Ali to provide the raw data which could verify Research 2000’s polling’s validity, Ali has refused to provide this data.
Here’s the full suit, filed in federal court in the Northern District of California:
