Jones Day Threatens SLAPP Suit Against Detroit-Area Blogger

Jones Day, the third largest law firm on the planet, is focusing their weighty legal acumen and collective wrath upon the head of one lone Detroit-area blogger who dared to poke serious fun at their activities in the Detroit bankruptcy proceedings. Also found in the blogger’s sardonic cross hairs is one of the firm’s former associates, Kevyn Orr — aka, Detroit’s Emergency Manager — both parties are being scorched in parody by the outspoken blogger over their joint roles in looting the already decimated city coffers.

Source: www.democracy-tree.com

Business clients call to ask me to examine some review that was posted on-line, wanting to sue for defamation. When I advise them that the comments are permissible statements of opinion and not actionable defamation, the next question is almost always, “but can you at least send a cease and desist letter to make him take it down?”

No, I can’t, because it would be a toothless threat designed to intimidate someone out of exercising their right of free speech.

Apparently the law firm of Jones Day does not operate under the same standard, especially when its own ox is being gored. As you’ll see from the letter they sent, the firm claimed that a blogger could not use its name in order to criticize it. This is a common ploy, used in the hope that the recipient of the threatening letter won’t know any better. Free speech would be dead indeed if critics could not name the people and entities they are criticizing. Just as Stephen Colbert can use the name and even the logo of Domino’s Pizza in his parody news report, this blogger was free to use the name and logo of Jones Day, and any action by Jones Day would have been a clear SLAPP suit. Here is the letter that the Electronic Frontier Foundation sent in return, calling Jones Day’s bluff.