“The Irish News must pay £25,000 plus court costs to a west Belfast Italian restaurant owner after a jury found a food critic’s review to be defamatory.” (“£25K for food critic’s poison pen”, BBC, Feb. 8). Journalist Caroline Workman, in a review of Ciaran Convery’s restaurant Goodfellas, had “described his staff as unhelpful, his cola as flat, and his chicken marsala ‘so sweet as to be inedible'”. Guardian restaurant critic Matthew Norman described the jury verdict as “very worrying news”: “You really cannot overstate the imbecility of a libel jury: what we really need now is a sustained campaign against our ludicrous libel laws.” (Maev Kennedy, “Critics bite back after restaurant reviewer sued for calling chicken too sweet”, Guardian, Feb. 10).
Posts Tagged ‘libel slander and defamation’
Litigious Princetonians
One of my favorite pop-culture bloggers, fellow Chicago Law graduate Adam Bonin, spots a line in today’s New York Times Vows column—
As their dating progressed, Ms. Wu researched Mr. Nobay online and learned that in 1998 he sued Princeton, unsuccessfully, for defamation after the university notified medical schools he had applied to that his applications contained misrepresentations and altered his academic record. (In court, he admitted misstatements but says he still believes some of what Princeton presented was inaccurate.)
—that obviously merited further investigation. Sure enough, AP reported in 1998:
The graduate, Rommel Nobay, had admitted he told numerous lies and half-truths in applying to Princeton and later to medical school. He claimed that he was part black and a National Merit Scholar and that a family of lepers had donated half their beggings to support his dream. … Nobay, 30, a computer science teacher from New Haven, admitted that he was not, in fact, a Merit Scholar and that a family of lepers had not helped send him to school. He also acknowledged that he doesn’t know whether he has any black blood.
Bonin notes an early 1990s suit by Princeton student Bruce L. Miller, who received $5.7 million after getting himself drunk and losing three limbs in a climb-a-train-plus-touch-high-voltage-wires-electrocution accident. (Regular Overlawyered readers know that this sort of suit doesn’t require a Princeton education.) But Bonin forgets to mention the drink-and-fall-off-the-Princeton-bell-tower lawsuit.
Chew out your lawyers, get sued for defamation
Firing your lawyers? Be careful what you say about them in doing so. William and Elizabeth Margrabe had grown increasingly dissatisfied with the legal work done on their behalf by the firm of Sexter and Warmflash in a Westchester County, N.Y. lawsuit over the sale of a stake in a family business. In a letter firing the firm, Mr. Margrabe charged that its work was “fraught with missteps, poor legal judgments, failure to protect your client’s rights on repeated occasions, and poor, adversarial, or misleading communications with your clients.” He further accused the attorneys of pursuing their own interests over those of clients in seeking a hasty resolution of some issues, and also of charging a usurious interest rate on its fee. He copied the letter to the new lawyers he had hired to take over the matter.
How did Sexter & Warmflash respond? It sued the Margrabes for $1 million for defamation. Trial court judge Shirley Werner Kornreich ruled that its suit could proceed, and ruled outright in Sexter’s favor on the Margrabes’ liability for the “usurious fee” allegation, but an appeals court reversed, ruling that the Margrabes were protected by a privilege extended to statements made as part of a legal proceeding. (Anthony Lin, “Law Firm’s Defamation Suit Against Former Client Dismissed”, New York Law Journal, Jan. 10).
January 24 roundup
- “[P]rotect good doctors from junk lawsuits by passing medical liability reform.” This sounds much like what we heard four years ago in Overlawyered. [Bush SOTU]
- Update: Autopsies in Comair crash (Sep. 19) have lawyers salivating over noneconomic damages possibilities. Refreshing honesty: “It’s all about money.” [AP/Insurance Journal]
- Driver falls asleep at wheel, blames Ford for resulting accident; Indiana jury disagrees. [Bloomberg/NorthJersey.com] Florida juries have been more generous (Nov. 17, 2005; Nov. 21, 2005).
- Being a minor defendant in a mass tort [Mass Tort Lit Blog]
- Gary Condit’s lawyer asks to withdraw from his “frivolous” libel suit (and roundup of Condit’s legal actions). [Levine @ Patterico]
- More on Abigail Alliance v. FDA [Marginal Revolution]
- More on the new prohibition (Oct. 19 and links therein). [Kirkendall]
- A review of the OJ Simpson book. [Wolcott @ Vanity Fair]
- “This is Ronald Reagan’s party. Why is it proposing Jimmy Carter’s energy policy?” [Frum]
- Congressional Black Caucus: no whites allowed, even for a representative of a majority-minority district. [The Politico]
- Three years ago in Overlawyered: John Edwards’s bundle of secrets
- Seven years ago in Overlawyered: Mormon student actress sues over profanity in theater productions, settles in 2004 for over $250,000.
- I’m speaking at WLF tomorrow morning with Victor Schwartz and Sherman Joyce. [Point of Law]
Lott v. Levitt, Part VIII, and Karla Knafel v. Chicago Sun-Times
The major claim of libel from the use of “replicates” in Freakonomics was thrown out because it could reasonably be constructed to have an innocent meaning; a smaller claim regarding Levitt’s accusations in an e-mail to a single person in response to a solicited query remain. John Lott’s link to the decision suggests a world where he isn’t going to give up even on the first claim, but that decision is soundly based on the recent precedent in Knafel v. Chicago Sun-Times, 413 F.3d 637 (7th Cir. 2005), a case of relevance to Overlawyered. In Knafel, columnist Richard Roeper criticized a woman suing Michael Jordan over an affair that they had:
In other words, you had sex with a famous, wealthy man, and you claim he promised to pay you $5 million to keep quiet about it, and now you want your money.
Knafel was once an aspiring singer. She’s now reportedly a hair designer. But, based on the money she’s been paid already and the additional funds she’s seeking in exchange for her affair with Jordan, she’s making herself sound like someone who once worked in a profession that’s a lot older than singing or hair designing.
Knafel sued over the column; the court noted that “Roeper almost certainly refers to prostitution when he talks about an ‘older’ profession,” but held that the possibility of an innocent construction permitted a motion to dismiss. (See also Media Law Prof blog from 2005.) And that passage was significantly less ambiguous than that in Lott’s case.
(Via Deltoid via Cowen.) Earlier coverage: Aug. 21 and links therein.
Chilling effects
A doctor who is a Metafilter poster analyzed photos of a famous top-gun celebrity (who is a recent father) and speculated that, because the actor had only three incisors, the middle one of which was “freakishly wide”, he might suffer from holoprosencephaly, a genetic defect that can lead to stillborn babies, and in “its more severe manifestions can lead to cyclopia, fusion of the frontal lobes, a primitive proboscis instead of a nose (located above the fusion eyeball), and other grisly abnormalities.” (Further evidence for the hypothesis: “his biological father was mildly retarded and beat him severely as a child. Mild retardation, with or without violent behaviors, can also be part of an incomplete holoprosencephaly syndrome.”) The maverick celebrity apparently had lawyers let Metafilter know that it would be risky business to keep the post up. Perhaps fearing collateral damage from a cocktail of litigation or a war of the entertainment and Internet worlds, Metafilter apparently acceded to the request to remove the speculative post rather than let a few good men be subject to an onslaught of lawyers (h/t).
Update: The commissar vanishes: even the Metafilter meta-post is down now, as is discussion about that removal. Googling reveals other discussion.
Newspaper owner: remove that window sign or else
Highlights Hair Salon owner Eric Zahm sympathized with workers seeking to form a union at the Santa Barbara News-Press, so he put a sign in his window reading “McCaw Obey the Law”, referring to the paper’s owner, Wendy McCaw. Next thing you know, McCaw’s lawyer, Barry Cappello, fired off a letter to Zahm threatening “appropriate action” if the sign were not taken down, on the grounds that the sign’s message exposed his client to “hatred, contempt and ridicule.” Zahm caved in for fear of a suit and took down the sign. So much for the notion that all newspaper magnates are devotees of freedom of speech (Matt Cota, “Santa Barbara News-Press Owner Threatens Hair Stylist Over Sign”, KSBY, Dec. 15).
More: In the comments, reader “imafish” alerts us to another lawsuit in which Ampersand Publishing LLC, which publishes the News-Press, has sued reporter Susan Paterno, claiming that an article she wrote about the newspaper in the American Journalism Review was a “biased, false and misleading diatribe”; charging her with libel and product disparagement, it asks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages. (Greg Risling, “Publisher Sues Reporter Over Story”, AP/Newsday, Dec. 19).
Annals of Pennsylvania libel law
As we have had occasion to note in the past, the home of Ben Franklin has somehow wound up as a place where newspapers are unusually vulnerable to intimidation by the threat of lawsuit (see Mar. 16, 2004, Nov. 21, 2006, etc.). Paul Carpenter, the excellent columnist with the Allentown Morning Call, sheds a bit of light on a case with which he was personally involved, Bufalino v. Associated Press (692 F.2d 266 (2d Cir.1982)). (“Small newspaper leads the way against bullies”, Nov. 26).
Lavely & Singer nastygrams
We’ve been entertained by these for some time (e.g., Jan. 12), and now they’re the subject of a Peter Lattman WSJ front-pager in today’s paper. One blogger admits that the firm does successfully bury some stories.
November 29 roundup
- Tennie Pierce takes his dog-food settlement to the LA City Council (Nov. 22). I repeat my offer to LA politicians: I’ll eat dog food for a lot less than $2.7 million plus severance pay. [LA Times]
- Bogus $20 million asbestos verdict in NY; Chrysler had previously won 14 consecutive asbestos trials in a row; jury found Chrysler 10% liable, which made it responsible for 80% of the damages under New York law. Studies show no relationship between automotive products and asbestos illnesses. [Point of Law; Bloomberg; AP]
- “Madison County Gets $17.6 Million Windfall Despite Philip Morris’ Escape From $10 Billion Judgment.” Earlier: Jun. 20 and links therein. [Alton Telegraph via Products Liability Prof Blog]
- How tenant-friendly courts hurt tenants. [Point of Law]
- Murnane on Justice Bob Thomas libel verdict. [Illinois Justice Blog]
- One year ago on Overlawyered: $60.9 million cerebral palsy verdict. Arbitrary bench verdict arbitrarily reduced to $40.5 million; case on appeal to Eleventh Circuit. [West’s Medical Malpractice Law Report]
- One year ago on Point of Law: Ray Harron, asbestos doctor and Connecticut decision against freedom of contract.
- The unpersuasive case for judicial activism. [Whelan @ Weekly Standard]
- Federalist Society Convention podcasts beginning to be posted. [Federalist Society]
- Are African-Americans “lagging” at major law firms, and if so, why? [Point of Law; New York Times; Lat; Sander]
- Nice PETA expose video. [Penn & Teller @ Google Video]