Libel and Defamation

I might have read the stupidest piece of garbage writing I've read in a long while this afternoon. It was a piece in "TownHall" by a guy named Kurt Schlichter, who apparently is a "lawyer." The piece is entitled, "Yeah, the Covington Kids Have a Case."

Garbage, I tell you.

If I had a client who was sued under the theory advanced by Mr. Schlichter, I would not only get it kicked out before ever coming near a jury, I would likely move to have my fees paid by the plaintiff for doing so.

Here are some of Mr. Schlichter's "brilliant" pieces of legal malpractice advice (emphasis added):

You go after the media targets, the ones who you can prove – via their tweets and news reports – knew the truth but didn’t print it to support their agenda. You find the Twitter trolls who circulated these lies and then find out their paymasters. And you find the blue check psychos demanding these kids be murdered for their race, religion, gender, and the baffled smile, in the face of the abuse that these liars hid from their audience.

OK, Mr. Big Shot. Please explain how you can prove that any of your "media targets" "knew the truth but didn't print it to support their agenda." Not only do you have to prove what someone else subjectively knew, you also have to prove why they did what they did. Do you think you can get one of them (assuming you can identify one) to say on the record, "Yes. I knew I was inaccurately reporting the news, but I just hate conservatives/Republicans so much I wanted to make the rest of the world hate them"? How about when your "media targets" raise an affirmative defense that their actions were merely cumulative, and there is no possible way to prove that their actions damaged this kid as opposed to someone else's actions like, say, a private citizen's.

Don't even get me started on how in the world you could ever actually quantify this kid's supposed damages. I mean, what is it worth to be interviewed sympathetically on the Today Show? 

Good luck. I thought you knew how to do this.

In sum, I believe that Mr. Schlichter means this:

If the old legal framework cannot right this wrong, then we need to create a new legal framework that will. And you do that by suing the hell out of them.

Again, good luck with that. I wonder if Mr. Schlichter ever wrote about "activist judges?" I wonder how this fits with those past writings?

For the curious, by the way, libel is a species of defamation and the legal elements of libel in Indiana are as follows:

1. a communication with defamatory imputation (i.e. "accusation")
2. malice
3. publication
4. damages

I'm not sure how right-wing blowhard "lawyer" Kurt Schlichter could possibly prove malice (or damages when the supposed victim is a high school kid . . . reputational damages are incredibly hard to prove and the evidence may show that this kid became, oh, I don't know, some sort of right-wing folk hero or something).

I also note that this right-wing outrage is awfully selective. Where was all of this discussion when they painted Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown as drug-addled psychopaths, without evidence? It couldn't possibly have anything to do with the skin color of the subjects or the political leanings of them, could it?

In sum, what a bunch of garbage. I never should have clicked on the link. I can't believe that someone actually gets paid to write that kind of drivel.