To be Defamatory, a Statement Must be Offered as a True Fact
A news article caught my eye today that beautifully illustrates an important aspect of defamation law. Here are the facts:
According to Sky News and others, an Australian tennis player by the name of Nick Kyrgios was playing in the Wimbledon final. Kyrgios was given a code violation for swearing, after a spectator called out before a second serve. Kyrgios then asked the umpire to eject the woman “who looks like she’s had about 700 drinks.” The woman is now reportedly suing for defamation for that statement, alleging that while it is true she had been drinking, she had not consumed 700 drinks.
Was the statement defamatory? Before I answer, let’s use an extreme example to illustrate the point. Continue reading
Damages Do Not Prove Defamation
Damages do not prove defamation.
A quick but very important aspect of defamation law.
If someone defames you, and that defamation results in a gazillion dollars in damages, then of course those damages will be highly relevant to the action.
But if someone says something about you that is not defamatory, and you suffer the same gazillion in damages, then those damages are irrelevant to any defamation analysis.
This seems self-evident, but I find myself in this conversation on a regular basis (with varying fact patterns): Continue reading
Lying blogger ordered to pay $3.5 million in defamation lawsuit | PersonalInjury.com
A Shelby County, Alabama, blogger, who spent five months in jail before agreeing to remove stories from his website about the son of a former governor, has now been ordered to pay $3.5 million in a defamation lawsuit filed by a former campaign manager for the state Attorney General.
The blogger had written about an fictional affair between the attorney general and the campaign manager.
Sourced through Scoop.it from: www.personalinjury.com
Yes, even bloggers are subject to defamation laws.
I encounter a common belief that anything published on the Internet is somehow protected free speech. In fact, it is protected free speech until one steps over the line into defamatory speech. Defamatory speech enjoys no protection.
Of note in this case, the blogger spent five months in jail for his defamation. Not because he defamed, but because he refused to stop defaming. You see, a court cannot order you not to publish information that you want to publish, but once that information has been found to be defamatory, then the court can order you never to tell the same lies again, and can order you to remove the lies from the Internet.
In this case, the blogger was ordered after trial to remove the defamatory comments, but refused to do so. He even added more information. This amounted to contempt, and the court put him in jail until he removed the statements. He stood on his purported principles for five months, and then relented and had his wife remove the posts.
Understanding the Wall of Wrong — Shaheed Sadeghi v. Delilah Snell
Shaheen Sadeghi and the Wall of Wrong.
I just wish counsel would run their defamation cases past me before filing. Here is a tale of a SLAPP that should have been spotted a mile away.
The tale starts with an article in OC Weekly. The article was about a guy named Shaheen Sadeghi. The article was extremely favorable to Sadeghi, referring to him as the “Curator of Cool” and discussing his amazing success in Orange County. OC Weekly even put his visage on the cover of the paper. Truly, it was a positive article that most would kill for.
But everyone has their detractors, and Sadeghi’s was a woman named Delilah Snell. After disclosing that Snell happens to be the girlfriend of a OC Weekly editor, the article reports on a dustup between Snell and Sadeghi, as told by Snell. Here is what the article said:
Still, some say Sadeghi will do whatever it takes to succeed. Delilah Snell, owner of Road Less Traveled, a shop in Santa Ana that sells environmentally friendly gifts and home goods, met with him in 2008 to discuss an opportunity to move to the Camp. (Full disclosure: Snell is the girlfriend of OC Weekly editor Gustavo Arellano.) She says the rent rate he gave was way too high, at least triple what she was paying, and she declined the offer. Then, she claims, he made a threat. “He basically said to me, ‘If you don’t move into my center, I will copy your business,'” she says.
Snell, co-founder of the Patchwork Indie Arts & Crafts Festival and a pioneer in Orange County’s eco-movement, believes her store is the model for the Camp’s SEED People’s Market, an airy, 12,000-square-foot gallery-type outlet that sells sustainable products and handmade crafts. Sadeghi owns the store with his wife, Linda. Snell claims that SEED has approached many of the vendors featured at Road Less Traveled and even used a photo of her shop in a promotional email sent out to customers. (The Weekly has a copy of the email.)
The article then goes on to tell Sadeghi’s side of the story:
Of Snell’s accusations, Sadeghi responds, “I think she’s full of it.” He says his business plan for SEED was dated “five years before she developed a business plan.”
“It’s a whole different store, whole different vibe,” he says, “and it has nothing to do with Road Less Traveled.”
The article then returns to singing the praises of Sadeghi, providing examples of how he is beloved by his tenants at his business centers like The Lab in Costa Mesa.
Sadeghi sued Snell in Orange County Superior Court, alleging in his complaint that Snell “orally accused Mr. Sadeghi of threatening to copy Ms. Snell’s business idea and plan if Ms. Snell did not move into Plaintiff’s retail center.” Sadeghi then alleged causes of action for slander, slander per se, libel, libel per se, invasion of privacy/false light, intentional interference with economic prospective advantage (sic), negligent interference with economic prospective advantage (sic), unfair competition, and injunctive relief. Whew! All arising from the statements Snell allegedly made to the OC Weekly, claiming that Sadeghi had said “If you don’t move into my center, I will copy your business.”
A Quick Aside to Discuss the “Wall of Wrong”.
A potential client will call me, and during the call will tell me about 20 evil deeds committed by the defendant. They have been horribly wronged, and they want to sue. Fair enough, but for a legal action each wrongful deed must be viewed independently to determine if it is actionable. I call the wrongful acts the “Wall of Wrong”, and each wrongful act is an item on that wall. I explain to the client that to determine if there is a case, we must walk up to the wall, take down each item and examine it independently to see if it will support an action. If not, it is tossed away never to be discussed again.
The reason this exercise is so important is because the client has a perception of being slammed by the defendant, and is absolutely convinced that all that wrongdoing must equate to an action, but when all the conduct that does not support the action is stripped away, the client will often see that what is left remaining is pretty petty.
So let’s take Mr. Sadeghi to the Wall of Wrong to see if he has a defamation action. Continue reading
Saying Your Letter Cannot be Published Does Not Make it True
In a prior posting, I discussed how ineffectual cease and desist letters are, and how some recipients of such letters will even post them as a sort of badge of honor.
In an apparent attempt by some attorneys to keep from having their letters published, I have now seen a number of instances where the attorney sending the letter adds the following language:
“You are not authorized to disclose the contents of this letter publicly or to disseminate it…”
Some even go so far as to claim that the letter is copyrighted, asserting that by publishing the letter the recipient will be violating copyright law. This is all hogwash, but I suppose the attorneys reason that the recipient may not know that it is hogwash, and it may prevent some of them from putting up the letter and making fun of the attorney and his or her client for sending it.
For a great example of this, and how instead of achieving the intended purpose it only invited greater comment, check out this amusing article by techdirt. The article is also a great example of not knowing when to hold them, and when to fold them.
I learned long ago to view every letter I draft as a potential trial exhibit. Don’t send a letter you would not want to see projected onto a wall for the judge and/or jury to view and critique. That rule now applies to the Internet. If an attorney feels the need to insert language falsely claiming that the recipient is not allowed to show it to anyone else, then that is a letter that probably should not be sent.
Using Offensive anti-SLAPP Deemed Frivolous
An international defamation action has ended up here in California. Out of the UK, Tyneside councillors (that’s the way they spell it over there) are very upset that an anonymous blogger who calls himself “Mr. Monkey” has been defaming them.
The council has backed a three-year hunt to discover the identity of Mr. Monkey, with the legal fees now exceeding six figures. So far, since they did not retain Morris & Stone, the attempts to uncover the identity of Mr. Monkey have been unsuccessful.
Enter Coun Ahmed Khan, a councillor from a rival political party. The four plaintiff councillors successfully moved to have Khan’s personal computer records disclosed, because they apparently suspected him of being Mr. Monkey. Khan denies that he is the primate in question, but has cried “enough is enough”, and wants to put an end to the search.
To that end, he brought what I can only characterize as an offensive anti-SLAPP motion (not offensive as in crude, but as in the opposite of defensive). He intervened in the San Mateo Superior Court action and filed an anti-SLAPP motion, asserting that even though he is not Mr. Monkey, the comments of Mr. Monkey are protected and the action should therefore be dismissed.
Motion DENIED. Indeed, the court found the motion to be so frivolous that it awarded attorney fees of £40,000 to the plaintiffs. (I once obtained a judgment in Los Angeles Superior Court in British pounds. It’s worth it just to see the court clerks try to figure out how to enter it into the system and calculate interest and the like.)
Khan has now appealed the denial of his anti-SLAPP motion and the award of attorney fees. The complete story can be found here.
[Correction] The sources upon which I was relying may have jumped the gun as to the award of attorney fees. One of the parties to the action contacted me to state that the £40,000 figure is what is being sought, but that the motion for those fees has been stayed pending the appeal.
“Fox & Friends” Hosts Not Liable for Repeating Parody
- Fox & Friends
The Internet is an amazing source for both information and misinformation. One of the most telling examples was the case of Sarah Palin. A fictional question and answer session was written and published, with Palin purportedly making the comment that dinosaurs had roamed the earth just 5000 years ago. Many failed to realize (or chose not to recognize) the story was satire, and reported the dinosaur story as true. (Leading to an almost tearful Matt Damon proclaiming during an interview that she was not fit to serve because of her dinosaur beliefs.)
So-called traditional news sources cannot ignore what is posted on the Internet because it often is a breaking source for news; the commercial airline landing in the Hudson river being a recent example. But when parody is mistaken for truth, defamation can occur.
The cable show “Fox & Friends” reported a parody about a school principal as true. The real story was that a middle school student had left some ham on a table frequented by Muslim students. He was disciplined for his insensitivity. The parody took the story to an extreme, claiming that the school principal had instituted an “anti-ham response plan,” designed to teach the children that “ham is not a toy.” The hosts of Fox & Friends reported the parody as truth, and derided the principal for his overreaction. The principal sued for defamation in Levesque v. Doocy.
Fox & Friends was saved by New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1964 Supreme Court decision that created the “actual malice” standard for defamation against a public figure (also referred to as “New York Times actual malice”). But for the fact that the plaintiff was deemed to be a public figure, Fox would have been liable.
Go here for the detailed story, and here for the actual court decision.
