Judge dismisses Jones lawsuit

WASHINGTON - A federal judge in Little Rock, Ark., threw out Paula Jones' sexual harassment lawsuit against President Clinton, abruptly calling off an often unseemly four-year legal struggle that opened virtually every corner of the president's private life to public scrutiny and led to a criminal investigation that has threatened to topple his administration.

In a ruling yesterday that shocked both sides in the long-running case, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright rejected all of Jones' claims stemming from her 1991 encounter with Clinton in a hotel suite, concluding that even if Clinton did proposition her crudely it did not constitute sexual assault and that she had not proven she was punished in the workplace or emotionally afflicted by Clinton for rebuffing him. "There are no genuine issues for trial in this case," she wrote.

The White House and its allies immediately rejoiced in what they saw as a momentous turning point, not only for the president's legal and political prospects but also for his chances of shaping a favorable legacy. "The president is pleased to receive the vindication that he's been waiting a long time for," said White House press secretary Michael McCurry.

But Jones' lawyers immediately signaled that they will appeal the dismissal, meaning months of additional legal maneuverings. And independent counsel Kenneth Starr said there would be "no effect" on his investigation into whether Clinton or his friends tried to tamper with witnesses stemming from the Jones case, including Monica Lewinsky, the former White House intern who reportedly was caught on tape saying the president wanted her to lie to Jones' lawyers about having an affair.

Wright's ruling stunned those involved in the case, most of whom were anticipating that the trial set to start May 27 in Little Rock would prove a grueling and combative ordeal. Clinton, who was nearing the end of an 11-day journey through Africa, initially asked his attorney calling from Washington if it was an April Fool's joke. Jones, according to one of her lawyers, heard the news on a cellular telephone call while driving in Southern California, pulled over to the side of the road and cried.

"I'm shocked, shocked," David Pyke, one of the Dallas-based lawyers for Jones, said minutes after learning of the ruling. "I think we had great grounds to go forward and the case should have gone forward."

In her 39-page ruling, Wright never addressed whether Clinton actually dropped his pants and asked Jones for oral sex in a suite at Little Rock's Excelsior Hotel on May 8, 1991, while he was Arkansas governor and she was a low-level state clerk. Instead, she granted the president's motion for summary judgment by arguing that if true, such behavior might be "boorish and offensive" but had not been shown to have done much damage to Jones.

The judge noted that Jones never filed a grievance, sought counseling or missed a day of work. Instead, Wright found that the evidence supported the Clinton team's defense that Jones received every merit raise she was due over the next two years and produced no firm proof that Clinton ever ordered any retribution against her.

"While the Court will certainly agree that (Jones's) allegations describe offensive conduct, the Court ... has found that the Governor's alleged conduct does not constitute sexual assault," Wright wrote. "Rather, the conduct as alleged by (Jones) describes a mere sexual proposition or encounter, albeit an odious one, that was relatively brief in duration, did not involve any coercion or threats of reprisal, and was abandoned as soon as (Jones) made clear that the advance was not welcome."

Wright was unpersuaded by reams of documents submitted by the Jones team in recent weeks alleging a pattern of extramarital sexual encounters by Clinton, dismissing the significance of it in a single paragraph.

"Whether other women may have been subjected to workplace harassment, and whether such evidence has allegedly been suppressed, does not change the fact that (Jones) has failed to demonstrate that she has a case worthy of submitting to a jury," the judge ruled.

Robert Bennett, Clinton's chief attorney, praised Wright for "her courage to make the right decision ... . She is right on the law, she is right on the facts and the opinion speaks for itself."

At the White House and in Clinton's traveling party in Africa, officials maintained a consciously subdued tone, in part out of concern for appearing to gloat and in part out of recognition of the great toll the Jones case has wrought on his presidency.

04-02-98