Category Archives: Libel

Oleg Deripaska totally missed the point of US libel law. (Hint: It doesnt exist to punish the critics of the rich and the corrupt).

A libel suit by a Russian billionaire got booted out of federal court Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2017.

Oleg Deripaskaha had sued the Associated Press for exposing his links  to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

US  District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle said  the suit  “cherry-picked sentences” that he wrongly claimed were defamatory even though he “does not dispute any material facts.”     

According to the AP, the story revealed how Manafort, a decade before joining the Trump campaign, had proposed to Deripaska a confidential business strategy to support pro-Russian political parties and to influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and former Soviet republics to benefit Putin’s government.

To recover for libel, a story must be false.

US First Amendment guarantees for freedom of speech and press are fairly straightforward  “black-letter law” — That is, they are so well settled in precedent  and statute that they are no longer subject to reasonable argument.

And yet, this year and last,  we have seen a raft of lawsuits apparently filed in the unlikely hope that the Trump administration’s dream of curtailing First Amendment rights will be endorsed by the courts. As Melissa Rosenberg of the Washington Post says:  “Billionaires want to enlist you in their secret plans to take down the press.”   For example:

Fake earthquake: Comedian John Oliver  was sued by coal company owner Bob Murray on June 21, 2017. The libel suit alleged that Oliver “meticulously planned attempt to assassinate the character  of … Mr. Murray.” (See Murray’s brief here).  Murray filed a similar lawsuit in April over a New York Times editorial.  (The Times response is here .)  In both cases, Continue reading →

Ben Eaton, Mary Schaeffer, Esther Calhoun, and Ellis Long (from left to right) successfully asked courts to dismiss the defamation lawsuit brought against them for speaking out about pollution in their town. (ACLU)

In June 2016, four Alabama citizens asked their state courts to dismiss a defamation lawsuit brought against them for criticizing the operations of a waste disposal company.

The courts agreed with the motion to dismiss in February, 2017.

The initial lawsuit was filed April 2016 by the owners of a Uniontown, Alabama waste dump, who alleged that the four citizens had hurt their reputation when they criticized the dump in statements to the media and on their Black Belt Citizens Facebook page.

Among the things that Eaton, Schaeffer, Calhoun and Long  said about the landfill that allegedly harmed Green Group Holdings (according to their court filings):

1. I feel like I’m in prison, we’re suffocated by toxic pollution and extreme poverty. Where are my freedoms? This is an environmental injustice & it’s happening in Uniontown and  everywhere. Its a landfill, its a tall mountain of coal ash and it has affected us. It affected our everyday life. It really has done a lot to our freedom. Its another impact of slavery.
Continue reading →