Free Republic

In a Friday Notice of Filing, Navy veteran Zachary notified Florida’s 14th Judicial Circuit in Bay County, that he would be seeking upwards of $453 million in damages through his defamation suit against The Associated Press. The wire service allegedly falsely accused Young of committing a felony while rescuing nearly two dozen women and a baby from Afghanistan.

CNN settled a lawsuit from a U.S. Navy veteran after a jury found the network guilty of defamation, putting the network on the hook for $5 million. Details of the settlement weren’t made public on Friday and came just hours after a Florida jury sided with Zachary Young, the veteran who brought the lawsuit for a segment that CNN ran on “The Lead With Jake Tapper.” The story at the center of the lawsuit was about people paid to rescue endangered Afghans following the Taliban takeover of the country in 2021.Mr. Young blamed CNN for destroying his business when it...

We previously discussed the defamation lawsuit brought by Navy veteran Zachary Young against CNN and anchor Jake Tapper. Young has been doing well in court and last week he won on additional major issues against CNN. In a pair of orders, the jury will be allowed to award punitive damages and his experts would be allowed to be heard by the jury on the damages in the case. It also found that the Navy veteran was not a public figure and thus is not subject to the higher standard of proof associated with that status. The punitive damages decision is...

The case may not be as well known (yet), but CNN could be facing a defamation liability rivaling or exceeding the $787 million Fox News paid out to Dominion Voting Systems. NewsBusters recently reported on Florida’s First District Court of Appeals affirming that plaintiff Zachary Young could seek punitive damages, in addition to economic and emotional damages, from the Cable News Network in a civil trial after they allegedly defamed him regarding his work in getting people out of Afghanistan. The total could near or exceed $1 billion. For that outcome to be remotely in the cards, Young needed to...