District attorney, others named in Mazzeo lawsuit

The woman who accused Gov. Jim Gibbons of attacking her in a parking garage has named more than a dozen people as potential defendants in her civil lawsuit, including Clark County District Attorney David Roger.

In court papers filed this week, Chrissy Mazzeo named Roger and three other attorneys in his office as possible co-defendants.

It also named several Las Vegas police officers and two women who shared a table with her and Gibbons at McCormick & Schmick's the night of the October 2006 incident.

Mazzeo's attorney, Robert Kossack, said the prosecutors were named because their names appeared on the district attorney's memo stating that authorities found only one set of surveillance tapes from the garage on the night in question.

Roger declined to comment Wednesday, saying his office has a policy of not speaking about potential litigation.

Kossack said he named the possible co-defendants in part to give the judge presiding over the case a chance to withdraw if there is a conflict of interest.

Mazzeo filed a lawsuit in federal court in October claiming that her rights to due process and equal protection were violated. She accused Gibbons of assaulting her; and the Las Vegas police, political consultant Sig Rogich and others of orchestrating a cover-up.

Mazzeo's civil lawsuit stems from an incident outside McCormick & Schmick's during the heated governor's race. She and several other were drinking with Gibbons at the restaurant. She accused Gibbons of attempting to sexually assault her in a parking garage outside the restaurant. She believed surveillance cameras caught the attack on video but a later viewing didn't show either one in the garage.

Gibbons has called Mazzeo's lawsuit groundless.

Gibbons recently was cleared in a federal probe of allegations that, as a congressman, he steered military contracts to a friend in exchange for kickbacks.

Contact reporter David Kihara at dkihara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039.