Threatening to expose someone’s embarrassing personal secrets unless they pay you money or agree to cooperate with you in other ways is ordinarily a legal offense, that of extortion. There’s a big exception, however: if you happen to be simultaneously pursuing a legal claim against your target, even a very weak one, such demands can magically become lawful after all, although they revert to being unlawful if the demands you levy are somehow excessive. Jim Lindgren and Eugene Volokh explain (both Feb. 1).
“The paradox of blackmail”
Threatening to expose someone’s embarrassing personal secrets unless they pay you money or agree to cooperate with you in other ways is ordinarily a legal offense, that of extortion. There’s a big exception, however: if you happen to be simultaneously pursuing a legal claim against your target, even a very weak one, such demands can […]
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