That’s Eugene Volokh’s capsule summary (Jul. 12) of the jury result reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Tony Twist, the former rock ’em-sock ’em Blues hockey player, was awarded $15 million Friday by a jury that concluded comic book artist Todd McFarlane had profited by using Twist’s name without his permission. McFarlane, formerly the principal artist and writer of Spiderman comics, gave the name Tony Twist to a violent New York mob boss in McFarlane’s Spawn comics in the early 1990s.” (Peter Shinkle, “Tony Twist wins $15 million verdict”, Jul. 10). Brian J. Noggle also comments.
Posts Tagged ‘libel slander and defamation’
OJR on web defamation
In an article in USC Annenberg’s Online Journalism Review, writer Mark Thompson examines some recent instances in which webloggers have been threatened with defamation actions on questionable grounds, such targets including Justene Adamec (Calblog) (see Jan. 22) and the pseudonymous “Atrios”. One source of jeopardy is courts’ penchant for narrowly construing statutes intended to protect press freedom: for example, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals refused to extend to the Internet a state law providing that newspapers and magazines cannot be sued for defamation until they’ve been given a chance to retract an item. Also mentions our commentary on the Luskin/Atrios case (see Oct. 30). (“Law Offers Internet Publishers Scant Guidance on Libel”, Jun. 16).
Mark Maughan sues Google over search engine results
CPA Mark Maughan is upset that a 2003 Google search for his name leads to a web page that, he says, accuses him incorrectly of wrongdoing. So he’s suing Google, AOL, Time Warner, and Yahoo–and guaranteeing that a search engine result for his name will now reveal him to be litigious. (Mark Maughan appears to be complaining about this page from the California Board of Accountancy that lists disciplinary actions, and claims that Maughan admitted the allegations against him. The Board defends the accuracy of its site.) Amusingly unclear on the concept: “Since AOL-Time Warner are one company, both are named as defendants, said plaintiffs attorney John A. Girardi.” (“Accountant ‘Googles’ Himself, Sues for Libel”, NBC4-TV, Mar. 19; Seth Fineberg, “Calif. CPA Sues Google, Others for Libel”, CPANews, Mar. 24; Slashdot thread) (via Bashman).
Shhhh! He’s got a lawyer!
In 1996 Frank Sulloway had a publishing hit with Born To Rebel, a book arguing that birth order is an important influence on individuals’ destinies (supposedly, first-born children grow up conservative, later-borns want to rock the boat). There were doubters, however, and a critique has now appeared claiming that Sulloway’s data does not back up his conclusions. According to a summary of the situation by Alex Tabarrok (Mar. 20), the appearance of this critique in print was drastically delayed by Sulloway’s threats to sue the journal’s publisher and editor over defamation and other alleged wrongs. The journal’s publisher declined to publish even a debate on the book unless assured that it would not be sued, with the result that editor Gary Johnson and his association wound up publishing it independently, after nearly five years of delay. Tabarrok has much more detail about the story, which he finds “shocking” and “disturbing”.
Lawyers for author John Gray (Men are From Mars…) threatened a libel suit after a weblog said rude things about his on-first-glance-impressive educational credentials. That ensured more attention to the embarrassment, as Instapundit (Mar. 22) points out in a post with many links. (Plus: J.B. Howard Jr. has more on the case, Mar. 25). And the Michigan Court of Appeals has “dismissed a lawsuit in which the Michigan Education Association claimed the Mackinac Center, a free market think tank that has been at odds with the union on issues such as charter schools and education vouchers, had violated the privacy of MEA President Luigi Battaglieri by quoting him in a fund-raising letter. The court concluded that the letter ‘falls squarely within the protection of the First Amendment for discourse on matters of public interest.'” (Jacob Sullum, Reason “Hit and Run”, Mar. 22)(Mackinac Center, Mar. 19) More: John E. Kramer, “Calling the Bully’s Bluff”, Liberty and Law (Institute for Justice), Jun. (more on media and free speech suits)
On Pa. court sleaze, a kind of hush
Profile of a maverick attorney who after decades of fighting machine corruption and courthouse politics in Pennsylvania is now working for malpractice reform in the state: “[Bob] Surrick is upset about the silencing of the print media because of the fear of libel suits. He said that during the 18 years that Gene Roberts was the Philadelphia Inquirer’s executive editor, the newspaper won 17 Pulitzers, which was unheard of for a newspaper. But during the 1980s (while Roberts was still editor) Surrick said that the judges and justices started the business of suing their critics, particularly the print media critics, for libel, effectively silencing the Inquirer; after Roberts left, the newspaper no longer did investigative reporting on the judiciary. ‘If the media — the guardian of the truth about what is going on in government — does not tell you, who is going to tell you?’ Surrick asks.” (Eileen Laskas, “Whatever Happened to Bob Surrick?”, CountyPressOnline (Phila. suburbs), Jan. 28) (via Donna Rovito’s Liability Update Information Network). For more on the kinds of legal trouble you can get into by criticizing Pennsylvania judges, see Oct. 24-25, 2001.
Nurse Cullen’s references, cont’d
New York Times publishes its investigation into the 16-year career of the confessed killer nurse: “Mr. Cullen’s case has exposed a fundamental weakness in health care: the difficulty of prospective employers to learn of someone’s past troubles. Employers frequently refuse to pass on negative information, even about people they have fired, for fear of being sued for slander by the former employee. …[Mandated reporting systems are weak as well.] ‘There needs to be some kind of safe harbor that would allow past employers who’ve taken adverse actions to share that, and to describe the associated facts, without fear of legal action,’ said Dr. Arnold Milstein, a health care consultant and one of the founders of the Leapfrog Group, a national business alliance dedicated to improving health care.” (Richard Perez-Pena, David Kocieniewski and Jason George, “Through Gaps in System, Nurse Left Trail of Grief”, Feb. 29)(see Jan. 29, Dec. 18). Cut to Cure (Mar. 2) comments: “So we have the lawyers saying on the one hand if we will just clean our own house and get rid of the bad apples, the medical liability problem will take care of itself. But when such efforts are made, the lawyers try to put a stop to it.”
The Christian Science Monitor has a good roundup of the state of reference-chilling (Randy Dotinga, “Would you hire this man?”, Mar. 1) but then goes on to illustrate the problem only too well by way of a companion article whose advice is summed up in its title: “If an old boss smears you, hire a detective” (Jennifer LeClaire, Mar. 1). According to the latter piece, one complainant was successful in extracting a cash settlement from a former employer on the grounds that it had refused to respond at all to reference requests.
More weblogs threatened with lawsuits
The widely discussed Luskin/Atrios affair last fall (see Oct. 30) was just the start, it seems, as far as webloggers being menaced with litigation over their sites’ contents. In November Justene Adamec of CalBlog (Nov. 14) received a demand letter from a lawyer for a telemarketing firm “threatening to sue me and ‘my agents’ for invasion of privacy, misrepresentation and interference with economic relations” because of critical discussion about the firm in readers’ comments at the site. See also Damnum Absque Injuria, Nov. 9 and Nov. 14 and Right on the Left Beach, Nov. 15 and Nov. 17, which have useful information on the workings of this particular telemarketing firm/directory publisher, Infotel by name. And last month Michael Airhart at Ex-Gay Watch (Dec. 23) received a letter from LightHouse World Evangelism, Inc. located in Rohnert Park, Calif., threatening a defamation suit over a post in which Airhart expressed decided doubt about the medical claims made by Pastor Matthew C. Manning, who has appeared on Pat Robertson’s broadcast “700 Club” to say that he was healed by faith from HIV/AIDS.
Judge dismisses ethics case against Gary
Well, that was quick: “A judge Wednesday dismissed ethics complaints against prominent attorney Willie Gary and his partner. Circuit Judge Brian Lambert didn’t offer a reason for throwing out the case against Gary and Madison McClellan on the second day of a three-day hearing, although he had been considering several motions for dismissal, including one arguing there was a lack of evidence.” (see Jan. 5 and Apr. 1-2, 2002). “Judge dismisses ethics case against Willie Gary”, AP/Palm Beach Post, Jan. 7). (Note: this is AP’s corrected account, replacing an earlier version which affirmatively attributed the dismissal to lack of evidence.). More on the dismissal from Law.com: Harris Meyer, “Florida Judge Dismisses Ethics Case Against Willie Gary”, Miami Daily Business Review, Jan. 8. Update Sept. 5, 2005: underlying case and related litigation settle for sum upwards of $120 million.
In related matters, Evan Schaeffer, a plaintiff’s attorney practicing in fabled Madison County, Ill., links to our coverage of Gary and also recommends (as “antidote”) a Jonathan Harr New Yorker profile (PDF) which takes a rather more favorable view than we do of the Stuart, Fla.-based lawyer’s successes. And the St. Petersburg Times analyzes Gary’s recent $18 million win against Gannett in a “false light” defamation case (see Dec. 23; Mar. 30, 2001). The interesting thing about the “false light” doctrine is that it lets a publication be held liable for defamation even if all of the individual facts it printed were correct. (Stephen Nohlgren, “State: Case’s verdict shows truth no certain shield for media”, Jan. 4).
A libel lawyer, R.I.P.
Once they’re dead, they can’t sue dept.: U.K.’s Guardian runs a rather rough obituary notice of Peter Carter-Ruck, an attorney who specialized in suing publications under Britain’s famously pro-plaintiff libel laws. The fun starts in the very first paragraph: Carter-Ruck “did for freedom of speech what the Boston Strangler did for door-to-door salesmen,” says a former colleague. According to this not exactly fraternal source, the late attorney’s “technique involved writing menacing letters to encourage socialites to sue for ‘imagined slights'” and he was once heard saying, of his lucrative practice, “I like to bill the clients as the tears are flowing.” (David Hooper, “The Carter-Ruck chill”, The Guardian, Dec. 23; Mark Oliver, “Carter-Ruck: a ‘chancer out for money'”, Dec. 23). The Telegraph printed a less hostile, and outstandingly colorful, account of Carter-Ruck’s life (Dec. 22) as well as a piece conveying reactions to the Guardian obit (Joshua Rozenberg, “Carter-Ruck’s partner puts case for the defence”, Dec. 24)
Howard Dean letter to the editor
An eagle-eyed reader draws our attention to the June 29, 1988 New York Times, where the then-Lieutenant Governor of Vermont writes to the editor about a Times story on large damages awards in a libel case.
To the Editor:
Randall Bezanson and Gilbert Cranberg detailed a situation that I hope will get far worse. As a physician, I have been frustrated for years by the reluctance of state legislatures and the United States Congress to deal with liability problems of all kinds.
I have long maintained that until the legal profession and the news media are also afflicted with the increasingly severe consequences of a tort system that benefits few people outside the legal profession, there will be no return to a fair and reasonable system of justice.
The trends toward lawyers suing one another for malpractice and toward outrageous-size punitive damages in libel cases give me hope that the crisis in our tort system may finally come to the attention of those who can make this a public issue and improve the situation for all of us who require liability insurance to do business.
HOWARD DEAN, M.D.
Montpelier, Vt., June 17, 1988
The events of the past fifteen years should make Dr. Dean an even more enthusiastic proponent of tort reform; his Dean for America web site is somewhat more neutral.