- “Lucha Underground Wrestling Sends Legal Threat To Journalists For Publishing ‘Spoilers'” [Tim Geigner, TechDirt]
- Watch what you say about lawyers: politically active Baton Rouge trial lawyer threatens political blog The Hayride over critical coverage [The Hayride, Robert Davis/Louisiana Record]
- Update: Stanford’s Mark Jacobson drops defamation lawsuit against other scientists [Jonathan Adler, earlier]
- Update: federal judge tells town of Sibley, Iowa to stop threatening resident who runs website complaining about way town smells [ACLU of Iowa, earlier]
- Recent topics in FIRE “So To Speak” podcast series include Great Firewall of China, interview with former Evergreen State professor Bret Weinstein, Masterpiece Cakeshop case at SCOTUS, Is there a campus free speech crisis?
- “Spanish Hate/Anti-Terrorism Speech Laws Doing Little But Locking Up Comedians, Artists, And Dissidents” [Tim Cushing, TechDirt; a recent Scottish case]
Posts Tagged ‘libel slander and defamation’
Free speech roundup
- Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky: SCOTUS considers state ban on political apparel at polling places [Ilya Shapiro, Cato]
- Under American law governments cannot sue persons for defamation, and “slander of title” won’t do as substitute ploy for lawyer representing city of Sibley, Iowa [Jacob Sullum]
- “Someone Trying to Vanish My Post About Someone Trying to Vanish Another Post” [Eugene Volokh]
- “Free Speech and the Administrative State”, George Mason/Scalia Law Center for the Study of the Administrative State conference with videos;
- “Influencer Marketing Remains in FTC’s Crosshairs” [M. Sean Royall, Richard H. Cunningham, and Andrew B. Blumberg, WLF]
- Worth recalling: it was legal academia’s Critical Race movement that helped reinvigorate Left support for censorship and speech repression [Alan Dershowitz]
Free speech roundup
- Two new podcast series on free speech: “Make No Law,” from Ken White (Popehat) on Legal Talk Network; Clear and Present Danger: A History of Free Speech from Jacob Mchangama for FIRE and other groups;
- No, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act does not require tech companies to provide a “neutral public forum.” Has Sen. Ted Cruz been properly briefed on this? [John Samples]
- “Arizona naturopath Colleen Huber is suing me in Germany for defamation over my opinions about her so-called natural cancer treatments and research.” [Britt Hermes, Naturopathic Diaries]
- “Should the Government Get to Define ‘Native-American’ Art? One Woman’s Free Speech Fight” [Paul Detrick, Reason]
- “Minnesota prohibits any insignia deemed to be “political” — as determined solely at the discretion of the on-site election judges—from being worn into a polling place.” Overbroad? [Ilya Shapiro and Reilly Stephens on Cato brief in Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky]
- Free speech was under fire in 2017 [Jeffrey M. McCall, Providence Journal]
Attorney rebuffs Trump’s Fire and Fury cease-and-desist
Recommended: Attorney Elizabeth McNamara of Davis Wright Tremaine, a law firm known for its media defense practice, wrote this three-page letter on behalf of publisher Henry Holt and author Michael Wolff responding to Donald Trump’s letter demanding that it not publish Wolff’s book Fire and Fury (“My clients do not intend to cease publication, no such retraction will occur, and no apology is warranted.”). How strong are the President’s claims based on contractual non-disclosure and non-disparagement clauses? David Post has a few things to say about that [Volokh Conspiracy] As for Mr. Trump’s possible defamation claims, American courts will not ordinarily enjoin a defamatory publication unless the fact of defamation has been proven at trial, so any remedy he may have will need to be after-the-fact in any case. “The suggestion that Donald Trump would actually follow through on this latest of his many legal threats, much less win…. is the hootworthy part.” [Lowering the Bar]
Addressing a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the President once again called for changing libel laws to make it easier for plaintiffs to win, although libel is a matter of state rather than federal law [Gregory Korte and David Jackson, USA Today] Irony watch, from last month: “Trump’s statements ‘too vague, subjective, and lacking in precise meaning’ to be libelous,” in suit by political strategist who was the target of future President’s tweets in February 2016 [Eugene Volokh] “Trump has been filing and threatening lawsuits to shut up critics and adversaries over the whole course of his career,” I noted in this space last year. “Mr. Trump’s supporters should also keep in mind that one day they too will want to criticize a public official without being punished for doing so.” [John Samples, Cato]
Free speech roundup
- Well, he would, wouldn’t he? “De Blasio thinks city-funded news outlets would be ‘more fair’” [Max Jaeger, New York Post]
- Watch out for Honest Ads Act, which purports to force disclosure of political advertising on the Internet [John Samples, Cato] One effect of campaign donor disclosure mandates is to enable retaliation against those who back “wrong” candidates [Eric Wang, Cato Policy Analysis]
- Court orders target not to publicize the libel takedown demand letter it got. Fair play? [Volokh]
- Ken at Popehat is so very unimpressed with Anthony Scaramucci’s defamation suit threat to Tufts student paper. Of course Ken frequently does defend the unimpressive;
- Complaints about corporate speech in politics subsided as fast as you could say “Patagonia” [Ira Stoll]
- “Court Says Google Must Unmask Person Who Left Wordless, One-Star Review Of Local Psychiatrist” [Tim Cushing, Techdirt]
“Why a Lot of Important Health Research Is Not Being Done”
“Lawsuits have an intimidating effect on an already difficult enterprise.” [Aaron E. Carroll, New York Times “Upshot”, citing suit against Harvard’s Pieter Cohen over his critical work on nutritional supplements and a new JAMA Internal Medicine article by Nicolas Bagley, Carroll, and Cohen]
Cosby accuser can sue Martin Singer over demand letter
When might libel lawyers face liability themselves for sending threat letters? Perhaps more often than had been assumed. Eriq Gardner, Hollywood Reporter on a new ruling in the Bill Cosby case (“Not only is Marty Singer being dragged back as a co-defendant in this lawsuit, but Dickinson is being allowed to sue Cosby over statements to media outlets. No litigation privilege attaches when demand letters are merely bluffs.”) Related: Max Kennerly, 2013.
Free speech roundup
- SCOTUS grants certiorari in three First Amendment cases, bringing term’s total to four so far: National Institute of Family & Life Advocates v. Becerra (challenge to California law requiring “crisis pregnancy centers” to convey state-prescribed messages), Lozman v. Riviera Beach (scope of First Amendment claims for retaliatory arrest), Minnesota Voters Alliance v. Mansky (ban on political apparel at polls) [Ronald K.L. Coleman, Amy Howe/ SCOTUSBlog, Eugene Volokh, Howard Wasserman]
- Roy Moore threatens Alabama newspapers with legal action, newspapers fire back with preserve-your-records-or-risk-sanctions warning [Erik Wemple, Washington Post]
- Section 230 at risk: proposed amendment to trafficking bill doesn’t go nearly far enough to remove chilling effect on online speech [R Street coalition letter, Mike Godwin, The Hill, earlier]
- “Judge Smacks Down Another Anonymous Cop’s Lawsuit Against Black Lives Matter” [Tim Cushing, TechDirt; earlier on Baton Rouge suits]
- Asian-American band gets their trademark “The Slants” — fought over in a case that went to the Supreme Court — registered at last [Eugene Volokh, earlier]
- “Sen. Feinstein’s Threat to ‘Do Something’ to Social Media Companies Is a Bigger Danger to Democracy Than Russia” [Scott Shackford, Reason]
…
Publisher: we’re canceling book on influence of Chinese government in Australia
Allen & Unwin, the publisher, says it does not plan to publish a book by Charles Sturt University academic Clive Hamilton called Silent Invasion, on the influence of the Chinese government in high places in Australia. Hamilton says the publisher has privately communicated to him that it is afraid of facing defamation lawsuits should it go forward. [Andrew Greene, Australian Broadcasting Corporation]
Annals of nastygrams: Roy Moore’s lawyer to Alabama press
Lawyers, grammarians and connoisseurs of nastygrams will be studying this one for a long time: attorney Trenton Garmon, representing Alabama Senate candidate (and longtime Overlawyered favorite) Roy Moore, has sent a demand letter to Alabama press outlets instructing them that they had better not run certain negative stories. [Elliot Hannon, Slate; Ed Kilgore, New York mag] More: Kevin Underhill, Lowering the Bar.