Kimberly Ososio, canned from her job as an editor at The Source magazine, portrayed the magazine’s offices as a “raunched-out workplace where executives watched porn, smoked pot and called female employees “b——.” An attorney for the magazine admitted that coarse and profane language was common there but said it was aimed at all parties, “not a gender-specific conduct”. A jury agreed with Osorio’s claim that she was sacked for complaining about sexualized goings-on; she also complained of defamation, but lost on sexual discrimination and harassment counts. (Jose Martinez, “Hip-hop mag bagged”, New York Daily News, Oct. 24; The magazine already faces bankruptcy proceedings due to other business problems. (Leonard Greene, “Editor’s New ‘Source’ of Woe”, New York Post, Oct. 25; Peter Carlson, “Hip-Hop Editor Wins Suit Over Her Firing”, Washington Post, Oct. 25; Joshua Rhett Miller, “Ex-Source editor hopes ruling redefines rap”, Metro New York, Oct. 25).
Posts Tagged ‘libel slander and defamation’
Update: appeals court tosses $18M Gannett verdict
Following urgings by prominent attorney and frequent Overlawyered mentionee Willie Gary, a jury in Pensacola, Fla. had awarded the sum to a road builder who said he was defamed by an investigative-journalism piece in the newspaper chain’s Pensacola News-Journal (Mar. 30-31, 2001; Dec. 23, 2003; Jan. 7, 2004). The Florida appeals court “ruled that Joe Anderson’s case should have been dismissed because he mischaracterized his lawsuit as a ‘false-light claim’ to get around a two-year statute of limitations that applies in libel cases. The court said that since its decision was based on the statute-of-limitations issue, it did not rule on several other arguments for reversal raised by the newspaper.” (Ginny Graybiel, “News Journal suit reversed”, Oct. 21).
Dr. Lawrence M. Poliner v. Presbyterian Hospital update
The ludicrous $366 million award on a conspiracy theory (Aug. 30, 2004; Sep. 2, 2004) was, as we predicted reduced by remittitur to a still ludicrous $22.5 million. (Plaintiff’s attorney’s press release, Sep. 21). Kevin M.D.’s commenters note that the trial bar simultaneously complains that doctors don’t do enough to police themselves and then hold doctors liable for policing other doctors.
Note that the doctors whom the verdict was issued against weren’t even the ones on the peer review committee that suspended Dr. Poliner’s privileges for a few months; they were just the ones who started the peer-review process.
Criticizing a land developer
Among those to experience the legal hazards of doing so: photographer Michael Gabor and others, facing a suit for $5 million after they posted online comments blasting the developers of a project in the historic section of Newburgh, N.Y. (Oliver Mackson, “Trouble brews in cyberspace over Newburgh blog”, Times Herald-Record, Oct. 15).
“Crook”, “con artist”, “fraud”
Bloggers and blog-commenters might want to think very carefully before employing those epithets. Sue Scheff of Weston, Fla. obtained an $11 million default verdict in her defamation lawsuit against Carey Bock of Mandeville, La., who’d used the expressions in denouncing Scheff. (Laura Parker, “Jury awards $11.3M over defamatory Internet posts”, USA Today, Oct. 11). David Lat writes, “Eleven million dollars? You can call us whatever you like for that kind of money. … Most wrongful-death awards that are smaller than that.” (Oct. 11).
Very big breaking news: UK libel laws narrowed
One of the few places where the UK is more litigious than the United States is in its infamously broad libel laws, which put the burden of the proof on the defendant to prove the truth of a statement, resulting in multiple instances of “libel tourism,” which we’ve noted previously: e.g., Aug. 1, Jan. 6, 2004, and, most notably, by Saudi businessmen hoping to preclude investigations into their relationship with terrorists, Oct. 26, 2003. (In contrast, in the United States, the Supreme Court has ruled that, to avoid “chilling effects” on First Amendment speech rights, a public-figure plaintiff must prove an intentional or reckless falsehood.) Britain’s top court sided with the Wall Street Journal Europe and created a legal defense whereby a speaker who “behave[s] fairly and responsibly” in reporting on a matter of public importance will not be liable for defamatory statements. (Aaron O. Patrick, “U.K. Court Backs WSJE in Libel Ruling”, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 11; Lattman). This moves the UK much closer to the US in its libel law.
I am not the first to note that, while academics and courts of all stripes recognize the potential chilling effects of litigation on First Amendment rights, courts have been reluctant to acknowledge the chilling effects of litigation on other rights and economically productive activity.
Defamation suits for the deceased
Truly bad ideas from legal academia, part 2038 of a series: GWU lawprof Jonathan Turley wants to get rid of the common-law rule that you can’t sue someone for injuring the reputation of a dead person. (“Give the Dead Their Due”, Washington Post, Sept. 17). At Volokh Conspiracy, commenter elChato writes,
I for one look forward to the descendants of the original Hatfields and McCoys settling in court who was responsible for starting and perpetuating their long-ago feud. The OK Corral battle can live again. Any descendants of Boss Tweed should be able to sue bookwriters who claim he stole $200 million (where’s the proof?), Huey Long’s descendants should be able to sue anyone who said he engaged in bribery and corruption (he was never convicted- where’s the proof?), and on and on and on.
Yes indeed, a great use for the time and energies of the court system which is otherwise sitting idle because there simply are not enough disputes among the living to keep judges busy.
Talk show subpoenaed in Boston mosque suit
The Islamic Society of Boston, which is engaged in numerous lawsuits against media organizations and critics of its activities (see Jan. 5, May 19), has now subpoenaed local radio talk station WTTK-FM “after one of its prominent hosts, Michael Graham, discussed the [ISB’s mosque-building] project on the air…. after reviewing the subpoena, attorney Harvey Silverglate, a Cambridge civil liberties specialist, described it as ‘extraordinary.'”, noting that it requests, among other things, “materials used by Graham to support his remarks about the ISB… and communications between Graham and other defendants or attorneys involved in the ISB defamation suit.” (Laura Crimaldi, “Islamic Society subpoenas WTTK in defamation suit”, Boston Herald, Aug. 27).
Lott v. Levitt, Part VII
Since our initial coverage, William Ford and Tim Lambert have been following this case so closely that I’ve been focusing on other issues where I have more of a comparative advantage rather than doing posts that would end up being similar to theirs. It’s unlikely that I’m going to have anything new to say about the case that you haven’t seen in earlier posts, so, barring major developments, from hereon out I defer to their coverage; John Lott’s blog also has occasional coverage of the case, as does Levitt’s. One last roundup of links:
- Michael Shermer writes in Scientific American, channeling Ronald Reagan, “Mr. Lott, tear down this legal wall and let us return to doing science without lawyers.”
- Ford has given the case its own category on his blog, and has posts linking to Lott’s reply brief and a Chicago magazine profile of the case. In the latter article, GMU Law dean Daniel Polsby has a very perceptive comment on Lott that corresponds to my personal experience: “[Lott is] a man of almost unparalleled personal intensity… He is one of the most energetic, gifted econometricians of his generation, if not in history. But he seems incapable of distinguishing between large disagreements and small disagreements.”
Indians Sue, Yet Again, to Ban “Redskins” Name
The only thing worse than a frivolous lawsuit is a frivolous repeat of a frivolous lawsuit:
A group of Native Americans filed a new legal challenge yesterday to trademarks for the name and logo of the Washington Redskins, saying the team’s name is a racial slur that should be changed.
A petition filed at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office by six Native Americans represents a second chance for Indians to challenge the football franchise’s name. The team prevailed in an earlier fight when a U.S. District Court judge ruled that the plaintiffs waited too long under trademark law to object. This time, the complaint was filed with a new set of plaintiffs.
…
“The term ‘redskin’ was and is a pejorative, derogatory, denigrating, offensive, scandalous, contemptuous, disreputable, disparaging and racist designation for a Native American person,” the complaint says.
Whatever thesaurus the plaintiffs are using, I want one. I’m surprised the complaint didn’t add “just plain icky.”