How Dr. Greg St. Claire’s Defamation “Spin” Has Backfired

Black Star Editorial

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In the weeks since the Lansing State Journal and Philadelphia Inquirer published stories about Dr. Paul Gregory St. Claire’s defamation lawsuit against Black Star News and publisher Milton Allimadi, our website has received more than 15,000 additional visitors compared with the same period in previous years.

That surge appears to be the unintended consequence of an effort by St. Claire and his defamation attorney, Chris Newberg of Grand Rapids-based Kuiper Kraemer PC, to portray a default judgment as a victory on the merits.

It was not.

On July 8, 2026, the Ingham County 30th Judicial Circuit Court in Lansing entered a default judgment against Allimadi. The dispute arose after Allimadi’s responses to interrogatories were submitted to his attorney for forwarding 48 hours after the deadline.

The delay occurred amid an extraordinary circumstance. On June 22, while preparing his responses, Allimadi discovered that emails exchanged with St. Claire’s divorce attorney, Jessica Larson, between November 2023 and November 2025 had been deleted from his Gmail account. He immediately reported the apparent hacking and deletions to the FBI. On June 26, he went to the FBI’s New York office at 26 Federal Plaza and filed another complaint. That same day, he discovered that emails exchanged with Newberg had also been deleted. Those deletions were reported to the FBI and subsequently to the NYPD.

Because of the default, the jury never heard the merits of St. Claire’s defamation allegations. The jury was instead asked to determine damages and returned a $12 million award. Allimadi has challenged the default judgment. The court has scheduled October 7 to hear his motion to set it aside. If that challenge succeeds, the case can proceed to the merits, where the evidence and journalism at issue can finally be examined.

That is the day we look forward to.

Yet St. Claire and Newberg apparently chose to tell the Lansing State Journal and Philadelphia Inquirer a very different story: that St. Claire had somehow prevailed on the merits and that the judgment proved Black Star News had defamed him.

That characterization is misleading.

And it may have produced precisely the opposite result from what they intended.

Readers who came to BlackStarNews.com after seeing those stories were exposed, many for the first time, to our extensive reporting concerning St. Claire and the allegations surrounding his conduct.

They learned that, following a six-month investigation, Meridian Township Police in Okemos recommended on April 10, 2025 that St. Claire, a former University of Michigan Health Sparrow anesthesiologist, be criminally prosecuted over allegations that he poisoned his Haitian-born former wife, Cassandra Fameux, with antipsychotic drugs between 2014 and 2023.

According to the allegations reported to police, Fameux signed a Judgment of Separate Maintenance Agreement in February 2018 that transferred all of the couple’s marital assets—millions of dollars in cash and two homes—to St. Claire, while she was under the influence of the drugs.

Readers also learned that a probate court had previously adjudged Fameux incompetent, yet no Guardian Ad Litem was appointed before she signed the agreement.

They learned that Fameux told police she had been diagnosed and medicated for schizophrenia despite four psychiatrists subsequently concluding that she was never schizophrenic and did not have bipolar disorder. She identified a series of medications allegedly administered to her, including Risperdal, Invega Sustenna and Abilify.

One psychiatrist, Dr. Rita Aouad, testified during the divorce proceedings that Fameux suffered from severe PTSD stemming from what she described as an abusive marriage. Fameux also provided police with an audio recording of a conversation in which Dr. Dominic Barberio, the physician she identified as having diagnosed her, agreed that she was not schizophrenic.

Readers learned that medical records identified Barberio as the person who administered Fameux’s monthly Invega Sustenna injections for several years, while Barberio testified in the divorce proceedings that St. Claire administered approximately 90 percent of the injections himself while the rest were by his nurses.

They also learned that Fameux alleged Barberio came to the marital home to administer an injection when St. Claire was angry with her and described it as punishment. Barberio claimed he only made one visit and that it was due to the pandemic and denied it was for punishment.

Readers were also introduced to allegations concerning St. Claire’s conduct during his earlier marriage to Dr. Marcy Street. In a sworn affidavit from the couple’s former housekeeper, Shelley Van Epps, filed during their divorce proceedings, Van Epps described behavior she characterized as bizarre and frightening. She described what she witnessed while working on Nov. 13, 2003: “Dr. St. Claire was eating cat food and swigging wine from a gallon jug. This occurred at approximately 11 a.m.”

Ms. Van Epps further stated that Dr. St. Claire asked her numerous personal questions, including, “Does your husband rub your clitoris, I mean back?” She alleged that he repeatedly told her he was “horny,” asked whether she was “horny,” and asked whether her husband would ever kill her and her children. She concluded her affidavit: “I was frightened by his behavior, which I found bizarre and unexplainable… I called Dr. Street and explained what had happened because I was fearful of his behavior and afraid for Dr. Street and her children.”

More than two decades later, during St. Claire’s 2024 deposition in his divorce from Fameux, her attorney questioned him about the affidavit. St. Claire acknowledged that he had eaten pet food, although he disputed aspects of Van Epps’ account and said he had tried dog food rather than cat food.

Readers also learned that the University of Michigan had sustained multiple sexual-harassment allegations involving St. Claire by coworkers and a patient, yet never terminated him.Reportedly, a nurse who complained after allegedly being patted on her rear-end was the one who was fired. St. Claire denied touching her. He said he intentionally pushed the hand of another nurse, which then touched the first nurse’s rear-end. He testified that he thought it was “funny.” 

When the university terminated St. Claire in February 2024, he and the university entered into a nondisclosure agreement. St. Claire testified during his divorce that his departure was connected to allegations that he had accessed and altered Fameux’s medical records.

Notes by Linda Wenzel, Fameux’s social worker at Lansing-based Community Mental Health, state that Michigan’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs told Wenzel in July 2024 that St. Claire had altered his wife’s medical records, characterizing that as a crime and advising Fameux to report it to police and seek a Personal Protection Order. Fameux subsequently filed a police complaint.

Despite these allegations and records, St. Claire continues to hold a Michigan medical license.

Readers also learned about our reporting concerning an apparent scheme that led to the fabrication of a Guardian Ad Litem for Fameux—in order to uphold the JOSM which was otherwise void—involving St. Claire, his divorce lawyer Jessica Larson, and Judge Carol N. Koenig, who presided over the divorce. Black Star News reported this apparent scheme to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel, the Ingham County Prosecutor John Dewane, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Six months later, for reasons that remain unexplained, Larson’s law firm shut down.

These are the stories that thousands of new readers discovered after St. Claire and Newberg sought publicity portraying the default judgment as a vindication.

If their objective was to suppress attention to Black Star News’ reporting, the strategy appears to have backfired spectacularly.

Instead of burying the journalism, they sent thousands of additional readers directly to it. We have consistently reported allegations as allegations and stand prepared to defend our journalism and the evidence supporting it.

The default judgment did not give a jury the opportunity to determine whether our reporting was true, substantially true, protected opinion or otherwise legally actionable. The merits have not been tried.

Allimadi has challenged the default, and the court has set a hearing on that challenge.

We look forward to that day in court.

That is where this case should ultimately be decided—not through misleading headlines, selective media narratives or claims of a victory that the jury was never permitted to establish on the merits, but through the evidence