Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion
Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute
Thinking about Suing
If among my loyal readers there are any attorneys with expertise in libel law, in the US or UK, who might be willing to consult on a possible series of lawsuits for reckless defamation of character resulting in professional harm--done on a contingency basis-- I'd much appreciate hearing from you.
posted by Juan Cole @ 2/21/2006 12:31:00 AM
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Winner, October 5, 2007, Scott Nearing Award for Courageous Scholarship (Awarded by the Graduate Students of the Political Science Department, University of Pennsylvania).
Winner, 2005 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, Hunter College.
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4 Comments:
I am not a lawyer and can offer, therefore, only some morale (mit 'e') support for your efforts to try to bring some truth to World of make-believe when it comes to the Middle East. The complexities of the issues go far beyond what the usual ideologues would pretend to have most American speakers believe when it comes to resolving conflicts with the various factions and their facts in the region. We know that those who speak 'English' are the same ones who are intent on reclaiming some dignity and appearances of propriety for the Angaloid imperial (ad)ventures, resurrecting the ghosts of eras past when the dayze of Faisal and the Shah were golden and glorious. While those indigenous to the Arab and Persian Worlds tend to not forget the lessons of the past, the revivalists and renaissance men (and we know that the 'Renaissance Faires' distort history as being an period presumed to relate to American history, but does not), these 'men' have nothing more than visions of fairies and spandex Robin Hood tights in their minds, crusading for the good of the uncommon man and some aluminium foil covered pieces of cardboard with which they might prance around, preening their collective feathers, tickling their fancies.
As we understand, Prince John was exiled only to be brought back to become the champion (voluntarily or not) of the Magna Carta. Errol tends to obscure this little piece of history, attempting to relegate political progress to the outer limits of the twilight zones. Dazzling smiles and brilliant colours are, though, what heroes of made of, fancifully and well-scripted. Coeur de Lion still lives in the hearts and minds of the invaders and occupiers, leaving Antonius, Lawrence, Bell and others as fictive or mythical characters, minisculy footnoted amongst hundreds of other factual sources some hundreds of years more current than the intentionally ignorant would want to recognise.
As you have gone far to bring your readers up to date -- if not up to the minute, it seems almost unavoidable that there would be those who would choose fantasy over fact, relying on beliefs that are about as current and realistic as any of the stated claims about Saddam Hussein and Iraq in general (weapons, flower'd greetings, self-sustaining rebuilding, and so on). Religiously devoted to their beliefs, a few conveniences like fictions, convictions, confidences, and diffidences (when confronting education or participation in on-the-ground, operational confrontations), these are certain to be difficultly removed, analogous to a root canal without anaesthetic. The dull but constant pain accompanying the deferring of the inevitable is preferable to prophylaxis and timely intervention, preventing the decaying and rotting policies. A shot of whiskey or a shot at quail (an affront to another former VP) is a sufficient remedy. it's on the morning-after when even less credible excuses are offered! And their party ain't even over yet!
But who are we to try to convince the masochists that there is a better and easier way? The Coeurs de Lion may wind up being toothless and truthless worriers, starving for what should sustain and strengthen them, relying instead on the putridity and regurgitative substances that apall the reasoned and seasoned consumers of highly nutritious food for the mind and its thoughts.
Well, I am a lawyer, but I do securities rather than these sorts of cases. I can, however, address some basic legal issues.
The first is that in the U.S., due to free speech concerns and the desire to avoid chilling public debate, so-called "public figures" have to prove a higher level of misconduct. Ordinary folk like me would just have to show an untrue statement of fact, while, Doc, I believe you would be a "public figure."
Accordingly, you would have to prove "malice," which is a fairly high standard. You would have to show that the person knew the statements to be false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. Than be be difficult.
Also, the measure of damages is the harm to your reputation, and that can be difficult to quantify (i.e., jury awards tend not to be that big, and that may discourage those contingent fee attorneys from lending a hand.)
Also remember that 56,000,000 Americans voted for George Bush. Assume you demonstrate that the statements were indeed false, but let's say you can't get the goods on the malice element and happen to lose. The response from the masses may well be that the statements then must have been true.
Another non-lawyer here with advice whose only virtue is that it's free. However, it is also probably accurate.
1. As Iyagushka says, the courts don't like to be troubled with cases where the aggrieved party hasn't attempted to seek recourse.
2. It's easy to show economic damage if one is selling lemonade and someone claims that it contains significant amounts of cyanide. There are lost sales. But if one is a middle aged college professor whose primary source of income remains intact, it starts to get to be difficult to prove how much income has been lost. What remains are punitive damages.
3. It's especially difficult to recover damages under US libel law when the aggrieved party has appeared on public fora and otherwise not attempted to preserve privacy. If the Clintons could sue for libel, they'd be richer than Bill Gates. A professor who runs a widely-quoted website and has appeared on some talk shows is somewhere in between a cloistered nun and a president in terms of being a public figure.
4. Lawsuits take forever, involve massive invasion of privacy, and consume huge sums of money. Sidney Blumenthal abandoned a lawsuit over a reckless and false claim that he he had beaten his wife because the expense prior to discovery was so high.
5. The courts are stuffed with Republican sympathizers who don't think it's libel to, say, equate voting for a Democrat to being pro-terrorist.
6. In the case of Rall v. Coulter, though, there's always the possibility of structuring it as an IPO (that's intended to be humor).
I'm a law student and studied libel in journalism school. You'd have a tough time showing actual damages it seems to me. If you were fired from your job as a professor over these published defamatory statments that would be one thing. Short of that I can't see it. Of course the standard answer is "It depends."
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