Posted on 01/04/2005 1:18:21 PM PST by freepatriot32
ping
One down.
One million to go.
good point.......this could be a great precident for suing teh crap out of SeeBS.......i'm not a lawyer though so I'd like to hear what others think.......This stuff usually doesn't pan out
Yeah. til now the only greedy corporations who could freely break the law and destroy peoples' lives were newspapers. heh-heh.
“Either the journalist has to have made up blatant lies or the truth was almost staring him in the face and he just wouldn’t pay heed. It’s more than even extreme sloppiness.”
And there must be ACTUAL malice (assuming this pol was a public figure).
if I remember the definition from my college days, this is a definite libel case, even if it was an editorial about a Public official. Libel is a defamatory falsehood published to a third party, causing social or economic harm. This certainly smacks of libel to me. Generally there are less stringent guidelines for judging libelous statements about public officials, since they in theory have given up some of their privacy/rights by making themselves known in public. The crux of the jury decision probably came down to the fact that the editorial page had printed the incorrect version of events editorial right alongside a conflicting "correct" report. The layout of the page made it obvious that the editorial was a thinly veiled political hack-job.
That amount is ridiculous. I am guessing it will be reduced upon appeal.
BUSTED!
They probably won't see the entire $600k+. but it'll be in the low six figures even after being knocked down on appeal.
Who's next?
probably not many more media establishments. CBS/MemoGate won't get them sued for libel/defamation. You can pretty much say anything you want about the President. Hustler Inc v. Falwell's decision in front of the supreme court pretty much means that the more "public" an official is, the more you can say about him and get away with it. Same goes for corporations as well. ABC News vs. Food Lion, for instance.
This does not mean you are free to slander someone or perpetuate fraud.
Wanna publish fiction? Make sure it is labeled as such.
bump for later, this is the best news I've heard in a LONG time!!!
This would be GREAT to use against the corrupt media outlets such as DNCBS...
Re-Designed ANTI-DNC Web Portal at --->
http://www.noDNC.com
CONCLUSION OF THOMAS JEFERSON'S 2ND INAUGURAL ADDRESS IN 1804
"During this course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety. They might, indeed, have been corrected by the wholesome punishments reserved to and provided by the laws of the several States against falsehood and defamation, but public duties more urgent press on the time of public servants, and the offenders have therefore been left to find their punishment in the public indignation.
Nor was it uninteresting to the world that an experiment should be fairly and fully made, whether freedom of discussion, unaided by power, is not sufficient for the propagation and protection of truth—whether a government conducting itself in the true spirit of its constitution, with zeal and purity, and doing no act which it would be unwilling the whole world should witness, can be written down by falsehood and defamation. The experiment has been tried; you have witnessed the scene; our fellow-citizens looked on, cool and collected; they saw the latent source from which these outrages proceeded; they gathered around their public functionaries, and when the Constitution called them to the decision by suffrage, they pronounced their verdict, honorable to those who had served them and consolatory to the friend of man who believes that he may be trusted with the control of his own affairs.
No inference is here intended that the laws provided by the States against false and defamatory publications should not be enforced; he who has time renders a service to public morals and public tranquillity in reforming these abuses by the salutary coercions of the law; but the experiment is noted to prove that, since truth and reason have maintained their ground against false opinions in league with false facts, the press, confined to truth, needs no other legal restraint; the public judgment will correct false reasoning and opinions on a full hearing of all parties; and no other definite line can be drawn between the inestimable liberty of the press and its demoralizing licentiousness. If there be still improprieties which this rule would not restrain, its supplement must be sought in the censorship of public opinion.
BTW, I think a hefty fine is the least they can impose. I'd like to see a little jail time go with it.
Watch some ACLU lawyers try to come after blogs that they don't like. Even if they don't win the case, they can destroy you with court and lawyer costs to defend yourself.
Obviously, at least to this judge, the newspaper acted with malice, or with a wanton and willful disregard for truth.
Failure to check the facts, by itself, is not grounds for a decision against the defendant. Or Dan Rather would be washing car windows at a Manhattan stop light.
Very interesting, putting Jefferson's words in here. Jefferson had been accused in the press by a former supporter of having sex with black slave women at Monticello. Now this was unlikely because the two women were his wife's half-sisters and there were witnessed liaisons between Jefferson's nephews and the women. But Jefferson wouldn't sue, leaving the false accusations to die on the vine, until ... the early 1970s when a fiction writer imagined that Jefferson did have sex with the women. Since then, with Jefferson and his contemporaries in their graves with no chance to defend themselves, a new generation has come to believe what people at the time knew to be false.
BTW, I have little doubt that after suing the county, the new commissioner had a grudge against the administrator and got him fired. Sure seems like a minor error, which side sued which, to base a $625,000 judgment.
I'd like to see Stoltz pursue a suit against Workman and the board. He'll probably get a settlement and slink away while the newspaper that tried to stand up for him gets hammered.
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