Shirley Sherrod tries to sub in Breitbart’s wife to sue

Former Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod — the woman who disputed now-deceased Andrew Breitbart’s videotaped version of her supposed racist rant, and subsequently sued — has moved to have the conservative icon’s wife named as the defendant in the case.

Ms. Sherrod wants to sub in Susannah Breitbart’s name and collect in court a financial award for the alleged “libel and slander,” Mr. Breitbart caused, Politico reported.

Mr. Breitbart’s news group released videos of a speech Ms. Sherrod delivered to the NAACP in 2010, during which she seemed to make racists statements about white people. The video resulted in her resignation from the Agriculture Department. She eventually won back her job after she showed that the video excerpt posted by Mr. Breitbart had actually been creatively edited and failed to show the full context of her remarks — that she was saying she had actually grown to reject the notion of racial stereotyping.

In February 2011, Ms. Sherrod sued Mr. Breitbart and his aide for defamation. But on March 1, 2012, Mr. Breitbart died, leaving in limbo the fate of the lawsuit. The court ruled that Ms. Sherrod’s case could continue, with the aide and an unnamed “John Doe” as the listed defendants.

Ms. Sherrod has now filed a motion “to substitute Mrs. Breitbart in place of her late husband as the defendant in this matter.”

Mrs. Breitbart, in response, filed a statement in court objecting “to the motion to substitute her in place of her late husband … and hereby fully reserves all rights, remedies, claims and defenses to the claims alleged by plaintiff in this action … to prevent plaintiff from seeking to recover punitive or other unavailable damages or relief against Mrs. Breitbart or any of her children.”