Bills’ Kicker Sues WOR-TV

Apr. 15, 1965 - Pete Gogolak, soccer-style kicking specialist of the Buffalo Bills, the American Football League champions, has initiated a $300,000 damage suit against WOR-TV in New York for showing a program that allegedly disgraced him.

Gogolak, who will be 23 years old Sunday, said that the sportscaster Clure Mosher interviewed a Syracuse man named Marty Handler, address unknown, on the television station last Nov. 6 and introduced him as Pete Gogolak. 

“This man explained how he was kicking the ball,” Gogolak said in a U.P.I. interview in December. “People came up to me and told me about it — people who didn’t know me. I was shocked.”

This impersonation, Gogolak contended in papers served today on three defendants, libeled him and diminished his image in the public eye.

Listed as defendants besides WOR-TV are Mosher, Handler, and R.K.O. General, Inc., parent corporation of WOR-TV. The suit will be filed in State Supreme Court in Buffalo upon return of papers, court sources said.

A spokesman for WOR-TV said today it had “no comment at this time.”Gogolak, a 1963 graduate of Cornell University, was the second-highest scorer in the AFL last season.

Support this project at patreon.com/realtime1960s