Tag: lawsuit

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom

The Last Shall Be First

Iowa Speech

The Iowa house has acted to make it easier for persons in the state to speak without getting sued into oblivion.

By a 94-1 vote, representatives passed House File 177, an anti-SLAPP bill that provides for prompt dismissal of lawsuits intended to intimidate people into silence rather than to redress wrongdoing. (A SLAPP is a “strategic lawsuit against public participation.”)

The bill seeks to protect “the exercise of the right of freedom of speech and of the press, the right to assemble and petition, and the right of association.”

One lawmaker behind the bill, Republican floor manager Steven Holt, said that he made it a priority after the Carroll Times Herald was litigated into penury for reporting on the case of a local married police officer, Jacob Smith, who had pursued inappropriate relationships with teenage girls.

Just before the paper published its findings, Smith resigned from his job. Then he promptly sued the Herald for libel. The reporting would make things tough for him, he attested.

The suit failed, but not before a year in court that cost the small-town newspaper about $140,000 in legal fees and related expenses. (The paper has launched a GoFundMe campaign to recover this amount.)

David Keating, president of Institute for Free Speech, says that if the anti-SLAPP bill is enacted, “Iowa would leap from last to best in the nation at preventing frivolous lawsuits from threatening free speech.”

Let’s hope that all other states then play catch-up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Too Many Words

Mount Pleasant, lawsuit, Attorney Chris Smith Kelly Gallaher,

The Institute for Justice (IJ) asks a question: “Does the First Amendment protect your right to criticize public officials without being subject to frivolous lawsuits?”

Kelly Gallaher is an activist in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, who provoked the ire of Village Attorney Chris Smith.

Seeking punitive damages, Smith has sued Gallaher for inflicting “emotional distress.” Her sin is penning “hundreds of posts on social media” criticizing Smith and other officials and their policies. (Hundreds! So many scribblings by just one person?)

The issue that apparently caused him to say “By Gawd, this is the last dang straw!” is term limits.

Recently, the town’s board of trustees voted to lengthen their elective term from two to three years. Gallaher and others called for a referendum to reverse the term-fattening.

To assuage concerns, Smith claimed that changing term limits had been discussed since 2018; in other words, the change wasn’t something being sprung without prequel. When Gallaher, remembering no such previous discussion, found no evidence of it, she suggested that Smith had lied.

Smith demanded a retraction. Gallaher didn’t want to retract, but did, fearing a lawsuit. Smith sued her anyway.

“The village attorney thinks he can use his law license to bully a political opponent into silence,” says Robert McNamara, the IJ attorney assigned to defend Gallaher. “But government officials are not in charge of how members of the public talk about politics, which is something we’ll be happy to explain to him in court.”

A politician so far from the spirit of American free speech is a politician who needs something more than a withering rebuttal in court. Think: recall vote.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Antifa Goons Give Up

Melissa Lewis and Morgan Grace, antifa, suit, copyright

Attorney Harmeet Dhillon of the Center for American Liberty congenially tweets: “A meet and confer that yielded an efficient result!”

The Center represents Andy Ngo, author of Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. Andy has been extensively covering the riots and related violence perpetrated by Antifa activists.

He’s doing the job that many purported reporters can’t bother with, even when onsite. (“Mostly peaceful protest,” was a standard refrain in summer 2020, even if flames dominated the screen as the reporter intoned those words.)

Ngo has been a victim of Antifa rioters’ physical violence in retaliation for covering their doings in detail; more recently, a target of their attempted judicial violence.

The anti-Andy lawsuit was launched by Antifa thugs Melissa Lewis and Morgan Grace — I mean, alleged thugs. They accused him of retweeting a video of rioting that they’d posted to Twitter as a way of saying “Yay! Look at our wonderful rioting!”

The retweeting infringed their copyright, they claimed.

Uh, guilty? Not the copyright-infringement part. The retweeting part. Which everybody does all the time on Twitter. It’s how Twitter works.

So why did the Antifa thugs then decide to quit so easily?

Probably, opposing counsel Ron Coleman, Dhillon’s colleague, explained things very slowly and clearly. Then, probably, Lewis and Grace’s own lawyer took them aside and explained things.

“The more this drags on,” I hear them advise, “the more attention the video itself will get. The video with the criminal activity you’re implicitly endorsing. Think it through . . . .”

Call it Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Sue the Governors!

Trevor Burfitt

Expect a tsunami of lawsuits against state and local governments. The lockdowns, mask mandates, and other putative ‘mitigation efforts’ to combat the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 demand a deluge.

The latest is Burfitt v. Newsom, filed in Kern County’s Superior Court of the State of California.

“The legal complaint,” explains Matthew Vadum in The Epoch Times, “seeks declaratory and injunctive relief for the constitutional violations it alleges have been committed by [Governor Gavin] Newsom and his officials, stating that the ‘lockdown was originally supposed to be only a temporary emergency measure. However, nearly seven months later it appears that, absent judicial intervention, there will never be a “reopening” to normal, pre-COVID activity, despite incontestable facts — including California’s own data . . . showing that the lockdown is no longer warranted and is causing far more harm than good.’”

The plaintiff is Father Trevor Burfitt, who simply seeks to carry on the established rites of the Roman Catholic Church. 

Though churchgoers and other observant religious people are increasingly defiant, politicians are generally following New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s lead. Cuomo says* his edicts apply regardless of religious affiliation: “the community must agree to the rules. If you do not agree to enforce the rules, then we will close the institutions down.”

But Cuomo’s “must” is actually iffy:

  1. The states of emergency do not pass the smell test, as the medical infrastructure the lockdowns initially were touted to defend are actually under scant stress.
  2. The basic right at issue here is beyond ecumenical, it is the freedom to peaceably assemble, which too many governors have attacked, though
  3. they have indeed been hardest on religious gatherings, despite being lenient with big box retailers, liquor stores and marijuana dispensaries and completely tolerant of ‘mostly peaceful protests.’

The biggest If, though, is what would happen were the litigation to fail. 

Citizen political action must join the litigation wave.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Mark Tapscott quotes Cuomo’s bracing statement in The Epoch Times, “Silicon Valley Pastor Fights $220,000 in Fines by California Officials for Holding Church Services.”

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Remember the Rigged Election?

FEC, debates, presidential, Commission on Presidential Debates, Lawsuit, libertarian, green

Remember the 2016 presidential election?

You know, the contest that still bedevils us? The one allegedly rigged by the Russians and fake news? The one the outcome of which Michael Moore (and others) suggested, even this week, should be overturned by “the courts” simply by installing Hillary Clinton as president?

Turns out one major element of the election process was rigged: the debates run by the Commission on Presidential Debates.*

At least, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has ruled** that, “In sum, with respect to Plaintiffs’ allegation that the FEC acted arbitrarily and capriciously and contrary to law when it dismissed their two administrative complaints, this court agrees. . . .”

The plaintiffs*** are Level the Playing Field (LPF), the Green Party, the Libertarian National Committee, and Dr. Peter Ackerman. They sued the Federal Election Commission because the FEC, as the judge wrote, “stuck its head in the sand and ignored the evidence.” Prior to the lawsuit, LPF and others had filed complaints and asked the FEC to establish fair rules. They were told to go play in — er, far away from — traffic.

“The FEC was the defendant in the case,” explained IVN News, “but the real villain in the story is the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a private organization . . . dominated by Democratic and Republican party stalwarts.”

Under federal law, the FEC, itself organized along bipartisan lines, is charged with ensuring that the CPD is using “objective” criteria, which doesn’t arbitrarily exclude independent and minor party candidates.

Now, thankfully, the court has ordered the FEC to come back, by April 3, with new thinking on how to ensure fair and open presidential debates.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The problems with the presidential debate rules and the CPD itself were covered extensively last year in these four commentaries: “Smash the Duopoly,” “The Media’s Job,” “The Stupidity of 15,” and “The Two-Product Economic System.”

** Tellingly, there’s been scant news coverage of the court decision except by IVN News, the Independent Voter Network website, and . . . RT, the Russian government’s TV channel.

*** The case is Level the Playing Field, et al v. Federal Election Commission.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights media and media people national politics & policies political challengers

A Suit of a Different Color

Melania, Donald, Trump, daily mail, scandal, sex worker, illustration

Donald Trump has threatened to use lawsuits against people he says are lying about him. Even if elected President.

Well, enter the third Mrs. Donald Trump, Melania. She is suing Britain’s Daily Mail* for suggesting that she may have worked as a “part time escort in New York,” explains the BBC, “and met husband Donald Trump, who is now running for the White House, earlier than previously reported.”

We know from published nude photographs that she was in the U.S. before the time specified by her presidential-hopeful husband. And for some, those nude photographs lend credence to a rumor about escort service work. (She’s made money for being photographed in sexual congress before.)

The Daily Mail has withdrawn its article, insisting that it had not “suggested the sex work claims were true but said that, even if false, they could affect the US presidential campaign.” Sounds like a defense to me.

Earlier this week I confessed to my lack of accounting expertise. Now I should do the same regarding law. Yet, the claim by the Trumps’ lawyer, Charles Harder, seems hard to take seriously — that is, that the defendants’ statements were “so egregious, malicious and harmful to Mrs. Trump that her damages are estimated at $150 million dollars.”

Really? That much?

Besides, it’s her husband’s career on the line. And a sex morals rumor about Mrs. Trump wilts next to the long list of rumors and established fact in the scandal department of actual candidate (and former First Lady) Mrs. Bill Clinton.

Seems with either major party candidate, we’re guaranteed a soap opera . . . and full employment for lawyers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* She is also suing an American blogger.

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Melania, Donald, Trump, daily mail, scandal, sex worker, illustration