Durham, N.C. lawyer Keith Hempstead says he’s dropping his suit against the Raleigh News & Observer (Jul. 14, Jul. 20), the one that charged that the paper’s quality had gone downhill because of staff cuts. Hempstead said his point had been made by the wide publicity accorded the lawsuit, during which he was interviewed by many major news organizations. (Leah Friedman, “Subscriber drops suit against The N&O”, N&O, Jul. 28). A nameless WSJ law blog commenter takes the view that announcing this rationale for dropping the suit sets up a “prima facie” counterclaim of abuse of process, should the newspaper choose to pursue one. Does it?
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thisis site is a gladiator for good in the war that is our legal system. with so many new ethical questions that the internet has raised particularly in journalism, I’m glad there are webmasters doing the right thing.
and since when could you sue over the declining quality of a newspaper? wouldn’t that be one, giant, never ending lawsuit
declining print journalism is nothing new, that’s what the internet is for.
If this isn’t evidence of abuse of process, then what is? How much worse can it get than a public, frank admission that one filed a lawsuit for something other than prosecuting the lawsuit?