News briefs from Southern California

July 18, 2001

PASADENA – Altadena Town Councilman Steve Lamb is facing a $2 million libel suit for allegedly writing an e-mail portraying former Los Angeles Councilman Art Snyder as a child-molesting Satanic priest.

Snyder, who is an attorney, filed the lawsuit on July 12 in Pasadena Superior Court.

The suit claimed Lamb sent a May 31 e-mail "with malice and reckless disregard for the truth." Snyder, who attached the e-mail to the lawsuit, said he's never met or talked with Lamb. The 68-year-old Eagle Rock resident said he was shocked by the e-mail.

"I've never been one of those to cower in the corner while someone willy-nilly beats me up," Snyder said Tuesday.

Lamb declined to discuss the lawsuit.

Snyder, who served on the Los Angeles City Council from 1967 to 1985, said a couple of recipients of Lamb's e-mail shared it with him because they were outraged by its contents. It allegedly referred to Snyder as a "vile, contemptible low-life" once secretly photographed officiating over a Satanic mass.

It also said Snyder "died a couple of years ago of prostate cancer" and "Snyder's daughter came forward and claimed he molested her."

Snyder said all of the statements are lies, although his ex-wife did falsely accuse him of molesting their daughter after a judge awarded him sole custody.