Vogue model wins right to unmask offensive blogger Follow

What are these buzz phrases you keep using? "Own your words"? Where does that come from? Why are you so obsessed with using it?



If the rules are stupid or unfair there is nothing adult about accepting the punishment for breaking them. Why does accepting responsibility for something equate, in your mind, to accepting punishments as laid out by oft arbitrary figures of authority, e.g. teachers? Running the risk of punsishment in itself shows that the cause is worth it to you.

Lenin didn't follow the law or willingly accept punishment, do you believe he lacked conviction? Schindler didn't follow the law or willingly accept punishment, do you believe he was unmanly? Maybe you should put in some qualifiers, I don't know.

Of course they would. Are you honestly trying to argue that in a world in which a model can sue a random anonymous poster on a random internet site for saying something about her she doesn't like, that the only reason an employer can sue for wrongful termination is because labor unions make it so?

Yes, idiot.

Cite one successful case of a teacher suing a school district for wrongful termination under such circumstances that doesn't revolve around breach of contract of a collective bargaining agreement.

What law is it you think would protect them, moron?

Ignoring actual law, just judging intuintionally:

- ***** - can also mean "disgusting" which is inherently an opinion
- 40-something - in this context is clearly an estimation, an opinion of how old she looks
- Psychotic - clearly a common insult from a layperson, not a psychological evalution
- Whoring - "*****" would be a common insult, but the use of "whoring" implies some actual action he's referring to. Either way, he could claim to mean it in the non-sexual sense of selling herself through modeling.
- Lying - this one is weirdly specific. I'm entirely uninterested in perusing this guy's blog - does he have actual stories about her lying about things?



Anyway, besides all that, and without knowing more details or the state's laws, I'd obviously like to see the case dismissed or decided in favor of the defendant. On its face, it just doesn't have the feel or spirit of libel.

Edited, Aug 19th 2009 9:24pm by trickybeck

Lol. You're kidding, right? How many teachers don't have such contracts? It's like you're insisting that cars don't need to have wheels on them because I can't show a case in which a car without wheels got into an accident or something...




In this particular case, you can sue if termination results from or causes defamation of character. It does not matter what profession you are in. If someone writes a rumor that you are a pedophile, and your employer fires you because of this, you can absolutely charge that by firing you, your employer was tacitly supporting the rumor, leading to defamation. An anonymous rumor is one thing, but getting fired means you must have done something wrong...


It's not about laws protecting people, but what the law doesn't allow you to be protected from. The "at will" termination rules have come about specifically because wrongful termination lawsuits were becoming ridiculously common and ridiculously expensive Smash. No one had to write a law allowing you to sue. We actually had to write laws limiting when you could. Think about that.

The clearest argument against the "it's the same thing as saying it in a bar!" is that if you say it in a bar, people can identify who said it.

This kind of blog is just a blind for cowards who think they're clever. He's hiding behind a curtain of anonymity to be as rude as he likes, and he obviously doesn't care whom he hurts by it.

None of which is illegal unless he's said something untrue and injurious, in which case it's perfectly reasonable that he be made to face up and pay up. In order to do that, though, he needs to face his accuser in a court of law.

Maybe the case will be thrown out, I dunno. I don't much care. But a judge has said that she has enough of a suit to bring him out in the open.

Where are you getting this? Statements in a bar aren't protected speech just because they are in a bar.

Also, there's a difference between an opinion and a mistatement of fact. And the difference isn't whether you preface it with IMO. If I said, "IMO the Pilgrims came to America in 1492," it wouldn't be an opinion. It would be a mistatement of fact. If I said, "The Pilgrims were ugly and foolish," that would be an opinion without the IMO.

So in this case, there will be motions to dismiss by the defense, arguing that he was expressing an opinion and there will be responses from the model's attorney arguing that it's a factual matter.

There will also be arguments about whether the standards for libel or slander will apply (unless NY has abolished the differing standard and just uses one for defamation) and arguments about whether the "absence of malice" standard applies.

That's what we pay judges to decide, based on legal standards.

If the judge decides the suit can go forward, then there will be arguments to the jury about whether and to what extent the model was harmed. That's what we "pay" juries to decide.

And if the people of NY aren't happy with how this turns out they can change the law affecting these situations in the future. There's no constitutional right to sue for defamation. The state legislature could limit it, or eliminate the cause of action altogether.

There are lots of defenses this blogger can use that have proved successful in past claims of defamation/libel - the ***** part was opinion, the age part done in good faith, no tanglible injury from any of it, the writings being public comment, etc etc. I honestly can't see the model winning a defamation claim here.

Seems like the cats already been let out of the bag though, if the blogger has been forced to reveal his/her identity.

The whole thing is nothing more than a butt-hurt induced publicity stunt that could leave behind precedent setting practices on privacy and anonymity....which I guess had to happen sooner or later. Would of just been nice to see it happen with some issue of real import.

You are correct obviously. However, I was referring to the legal standards. The law of defamation uses this approach to distinguish between actionable statements and unactionable statements.

Well that's what the lawyers are for. They pull out the legal precedents and any applicable statutes and then they argue to the judge who has the fun job of deciding. And then the judge's decision could be appealed to higher courts. Then they get to decide whether the judge made a reversible error.

For example, I remember reading a case where the statement in question referred to someone as some form of animal (I can't remember ... skunk? rat?) and the defense said that this is clearly inactionable opinion because obviously the writer could not have been referring to the object of his derision as an actual 4-legged wild animal with a white stripe down its back.

Sometimes you just don't even have to comment to show how wrong a statement is.

Well, if not, I'd like to see his methodology. Where's the documentation to back up his claim? If she's the world's skankiest *****, there should be plenty of evidence that she was and is involved in skanking.

You could be right. I don't pretend to know the ins and outs of this case, either. But calling someone a psychotic, lying, whoring ***** seems pretty specific to me, personally.

In this particular case, you can sue if termination results from or causes defamation of character. It does not matter what profession you are in. If someone writes a rumor that you are a @#%^phile, and your employer fires you because of this, you can absolutely charge that by firing you, your employer was tacitly supporting the rumor, leading to defamation. An anonymous rumor is one thing, but getting fired means you must have done something wrong...

Wrong.

Of course, it's trivial to prove your side of this argument, right? Cite a case where someone won damages in the situation you describe.