Now THERE’S a threat!

Or is he saying the “progressive community” is caste-bound?

Which is what this lawsuit is based on. To the extent that you argue “they had no contract, they have no right to sue”, you are offering no defense to the lawsuit. Arianna Huffington is offering just that argument in the court of public opinion, but she would be a fool to offer that argument in a court of law.

Jonathan Tasini, on the other hand, offers this argument in the court of public opinion: “It’s very important to understand the hypocrisy here. We are going to make Arianna Huffington a pariah in the progressive community”.

Within the progressive community, hypocrisy seems to trump everything. (For example, observe the fact that both Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich cheated on their wives yet it only seems to bother the progressive community that Newt was being hypocritical about it. Cheating on your wife shows no lack of character, cheating on your wife while proclaiming that as a general rule one should not cheat on ones wife is an unforgivable sin.) The progressives have long argued that wealth gained through capitalist activity is prima facie evidence of wrongdoing, it would be hypocritical of Arianna Huffington to now argue otherwise. (Inherited wealth, for some strange reason, does not seem to bother them as much.)

Insofar as Tasini makes his case in the court of public opinion within the progressive community, he will win it by forcing HuffPo to offer a settlement to avoid the PR disaster of appearing hypocritical. Insofar as Arianna Huffington continues to offer the rather Leona Helmsleyesque argument that it’s her money and the ‘little people’ have no legal right to the money, she will lose her case.

And that’s the problem here – it may not matter to your case whether you are right or wrong as a matter of law. It may matter more if you are right or wrong as a matter of ‘social justice’. And the progressives are the self-anointed arbiters of social justice.

The HuffPo lawsuit is a worthless piece of garbage. We are all agreed on that. But if your defense against a lawsuit consists of “this lawsuit is a worthless piece of garbage and anybody with an ounce of common sense can see that”, you are grasping a thin reed indeed. Our legal system does not necessarily have anything to do with common sense, or , as a wise man once said, it is a “…. legal system that too often turns litigation into a weapon against guilty and innocent alike, erodes individual responsibility, rewards sharp practice, enriches its participants at the public’s expense, and resists even modest efforts at reform and accountability.”

That being said, the common sense view of this would seem to be – in a quote from Arianna Huffington herself –

“That’s because no contract was broken. As Wall St. Cheat Sheet’s Damien Hoffman puts it:

In contract law, so long as two consenting parties agree to exchange legal services for reasonable consideration, the merits of the exchange are not for other parties to judge…….”

That is why this is so deliciously ironic. Arianna Huffington has had no problem whatsoever – as have politicians and activists and busybodies of all stripes – in interjecting herself into exchanges freely entered into by consenting parties. Whence this strange new respect for keeping your nose out of other peoples business?

Outside of maybe GM, when the USG bought a piece of the action, I’m simply not aware of employees profiting from a corporate sale.

Perhaps it’s ‘common sense’, but perhaps it’s also the law of contracts. If there’s no contract, then there’s no law to apply.