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Scholz’s suit vs. Delp’s ex-wife is revived

A state appeals court panel has revived Boston founder Tom Scholz’s defamation suit against his late bandmate Brad Delp’s ex-wife. The decision is a victory for Scholz, who sued Micki Delp and the Boston Herald for defamation after a series of articles was published following the singer’s 2007 suicide. The courts eventually dismissed both suits, but Scholz filed appeals. No decision has been made on the Herald suit. Scholz, mastermind of the rock band Boston, known for its mega-selling hits “More Than a Feeling” and “Don’t Look Back,” sued after the Boston Herald’s Inside Track writers Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa wrote articles about Brad Delp’s death that quoted Delp’s former wife along with other unnamed sources. Fee and Raposa reported that Micki Delp said the singer was “upset over the lingering bad feelings from the ugly breakup of the band Boston over 20 years ago’’ and was “driven to despair’’ by recent changes in the band. Scholz sued, claiming that the Herald articles suggested Scholz was to blame for the singer’s decision to kill himself. In the reversal, Justice Judd J. Carhart, representing the appeals court panel, wrote that “genuine issues of material fact exist” in Scholz’s suit against Micki Delp and that they should be examined. “Tom Scholz is pleased that the appeals court has confirmed that the statements attributed to Micki Delp in the Boston Herald are actionable and should be put before a jury,” said his attorney, Nicholas Carter. Michael S. Day, who represents Micki Delp, said in a statement that he believed the original dismissal of the case was correct and he expected “the claims will eventually be dismissed in their entirety.”