A Lawyer’s Perspective: Sandmann Likely to Win Against Twitter, More

Something rare just happened. A young person who doesn't follow the liberal orthodoxy defeated a major liberal news outlet. Two, in fact. How did these things happen following hours and hours of blistering news coverage? The case of Nicholas Sandmann and the resulting legal battle is one that scholars will be reading about and studying for decades. It might also be one that news organizations rue for even longer. I wrote about the topic on my legal blog and discussed some of the major cases of precedent prior to this one. While the government is restricted by law and precedent from most forms of libel protection, there are important elements for the common person. This goes double for individuals who are not in the public eye. Nicholas Sandmann was not a public official. He was not a public figure. The attention by the major media types attempted to make him into a national figure. However, he just wanted to go back to Covington high school and finish his studies. The media made this into a classic circus. This is troubling in many ways that I will discuss below. Even more important for Sandmann and for future aspirants in libel cases, there is a new precedent. One that will likely challenge the existing liberal media establishment.

The publicly-traded social media platform proves without a shadow of a doubt that they do not have a "terms of service" implemented to curb threats. Twitter’s ‘rules’ or their ‘terms of service’ is only a front to ban conservatives, We’ve known this to be true all along — now we have proof.

CASE IN POINT After a selectively edited video of the Covington Catholic teens went viral on Twitter, verified, bluecheck accounts accused the minor teens of mobbing and harassing a Native American activist — the full video of what transpired proved this narrative to be a huge lie. *********

Verified accounts ran with the lie and called for the murder, physical assault and even sexual crimes to be committed against the children. These calls for violence against children clearly violate Twitter’s ‘Terms of Service,’ however they took no action against the accounts. Every single account is still up. *********

Twitter has taken no action against these verified bluecheck accounts even though they blatantly violated the terms of service. In fact, hundreds of people reported ‘House Shoes,’ a Los Angeles-based DJ who called for the Covington Catholic kids to be burned alive and Twitter said in a response that his tweets did not violate the rules. (Excerpt) Read more at thegatewaypundit.com ...

This pattern and practice of making death threats proves that Twitter is not a common carrier; its executives should be liable for crimes committed using that service.

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CONTACT enforcement@sec.gov

SOURCE WIKI---Twitter Initial public offering (IPO)
-——On September 12, 2013, Twitter announced that it had filed papers with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ahead of a planned stock market listing.[95] It revealed its prospectus in an 800-page filing.[96] Twitter planned to raise US$1 billion as the basis for its stock market debut.[97] The IPO filing states that “200,000,000+ monthly active users” access Twitter and “500,000,000+ tweets per day” are posted.[34][98] In an October 15, 2013 amendment to their SEC S-1 filing,[99] Twitter declared that they would list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), quashing speculation that their stock would trade on the NASDAQ exchange. This decision was widely viewed to be a reaction to the botched initial public offering of Facebook.[100]

On November 6, 2013, 70 million shares[101] were priced at US$26 and issued by lead underwriter Goldman Sachs.[102]

On November 7, 2013, the first day of trading on the NYSE, Twitter shares opened at $26.00 and closed at US$44.90, giving the company a valuation of around US$31 billion.[103] The paperwork from show of November 7 that among the founders, Williams received a sum of US$2.56 billion and Dorsey received US$1.05 billion, while Costolo’s payment was US$345 million.[104]

On February 5, 2014, Twitter published its first results as a public company, showing a net loss of $511 million in the fourth quarter of 2013.[105]

On January 5, 2016, CEO Jack Dorsey commented on a report that Twitter planned to expand its character limit to 10,000 (private messages already had the longer limit as of July), requiring users to click to see anything beyond 140 characters. He said while Twitter would “never lose that feeling” of speed, users could do more with the text.[106] In September 2016, Twitter shares rose 20% after a report that it had received takeover approaches.[107] Potential buyers were Alphabet (parent company of Google),[107] Microsoft,[108][109][110] Salesforce.com,[107][111] Verizon,[111] and The Walt Disney Company.[112][113] Twitter’s board of directors were open to a deal, which could have come by the end of 2016.[107][114]

However, no deal was made, with reports in October stating that all the potential buyers dropped out partly due to concerns over abuse and harassment on the service.[115][116][117]

In June 2017, Twitter revamped its dashboard to improve the new user experience.[118][119]

As court precedent ^{,_primarily the unanimous 1964 New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision,_} showed prior, there is a different bar between those in the public eye and those who are not. Sandmann's actions made him certainly the opposite of a public official. Donald Trump can't sue the New York Times (in most cases) for what they write about him. Sandmann can sue (and win) over whether or not the Washington Post or CNN send virtual lynch mobs against him.

The Sullivan decision justified itself with the assertion that
". . . libel can claim no talismanic immunity from constitutional limitations. It must be measured by standards that satisfy the First Amendment”
We all love us some First Amendment - but in reality that claim is poppycock. In fact, prior to 1964 no court had ever asserted that the First Amendment had any effect at all on libel law.
That is true for the same reason that 1A has no effect on pornography restrictions. Namely, the fact that the objective of the Bill of Rights was to guarantee, and reassure the public, that the Constitution did not change the rights of the people in any non-explicit way.
There was no bill of rights in the unamended Constitution for the simple reason that the Federalists assumed, and wanted the public to assume, just that - that the Constitution didn’t change anyone’s common law rights. When forced to insert a bill of rights into the Constitution by amendment, the Federalists did two things:

In the first eight amendments they “enumerated” - did not claim to create but merely to articulate - rights, and only those rights, which had historically been denied by tyrants.

In the ninth and tenth amendments, they asserted the principle that if the Constitution is silent about a right, the Constitution does not change that right.

Thus, the fact that the Constitution - First Amendment and all - is silent about pornography law and libel law means that common law principles prior to the Constitution apply to them. Nobody thought that laws against pornography or libel were exceptionable in 1788, and to have assayed to weaken those laws by constitutional amendment in that era would have been to invite a firestorm of controversy.
Libel and slander are violations of the Ninth Commandment, "

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour
and the weakening of legal strictures against libel or slander would have been opposed from every pulpit in the land. No such furor erupted, because the First Amendment was understood to preserve “the” freedom of the press - freedom as it already existed, and was limited, by libel and pornography restrictions.
Antonin Scalia understood and articulated that argument, and Clarence Thomas does so now.
The New York Times Co. v. Sullivan decision was unanimous, but that was a ruling by the notorious Warren Court. Absent the investiture of Antonin Scalia in the year before the decision, Morrison v. Olson could have been unanimous too - but nobody now would venture to cite it as precedent for anything other than the fact that eight SCOTUS justices can be wrong at the same time. Well, the Sullivan decision proves that nine Warren Court justices could be egregiously wrong simultaneously.

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