As should be clear from follow-up comment posted shortly after that one, I was referring to the nearly one month that had passed between Expo reaching out to FLI and the publication of the article. When Jeff responded by noting reasons an organization might delay in making a statement, I wrote in reply: “A decision was made to send a response—that sounds vaguely threatening/intimidating to my ears—through FLI’s lawyer within days.” [1] Expo did allege a number of facts that I think can be fairly characterized as stonewalling.
It’s plausible that Expo is wildly misrepresenting the substance of its communications between it and FLI, but the article seems fairly well-sourced to me. If Expo’s characterization of the correspondence was unfair, I would expect FLI’s initial January 13 statement to have disclosed significant facts that FLI told Expo but it omitted from its article.
Of course, drawing adverse inferences because an organization hasn’t provided a response within two hours of a forum discussion starting would be ridiculous (over a holiday weekend in the US no less!). I wouldn’t have thought it was necessary to say that. However, based on the feedback I am getting here, it would have been much better for me to have said something like “I view FLI’s reported responses to Expo as stonewalling, and if FLI continues to offer the same responses . . . .” I apologize to FLI and everyone else here that my lack of clarity on that point contributed to a Forum environment on that morning that was too ready to settle on conclusions without giving FLI the opportunity to make a statement.
The line that sounded vaguely threatening/intimidating was “Any implication to the contrary would be false”—that sounds how I would expect a lawyer to vaguely allude to a possible defamation claim when they knew they would never file one. If you’ve already said X didn’t happen, what’s the point of that sentence?
As should be clear from follow-up comment posted shortly after that one, I was referring to the nearly one month that had passed between Expo reaching out to FLI and the publication of the article. When Jeff responded by noting reasons an organization might delay in making a statement, I wrote in reply: “A decision was made to send a response—that sounds vaguely threatening/intimidating to my ears—through FLI’s lawyer within days.” [1] Expo did allege a number of facts that I think can be fairly characterized as stonewalling.
It’s plausible that Expo is wildly misrepresenting the substance of its communications between it and FLI, but the article seems fairly well-sourced to me. If Expo’s characterization of the correspondence was unfair, I would expect FLI’s initial January 13 statement to have disclosed significant facts that FLI told Expo but it omitted from its article.
Of course, drawing adverse inferences because an organization hasn’t provided a response within two hours of a forum discussion starting would be ridiculous (over a holiday weekend in the US no less!). I wouldn’t have thought it was necessary to say that. However, based on the feedback I am getting here, it would have been much better for me to have said something like “I view FLI’s reported responses to Expo as stonewalling, and if FLI continues to offer the same responses . . . .” I apologize to FLI and everyone else here that my lack of clarity on that point contributed to a Forum environment on that morning that was too ready to settle on conclusions without giving FLI the opportunity to make a statement.
The line that sounded vaguely threatening/intimidating was “Any implication to the contrary would be false”—that sounds how I would expect a lawyer to vaguely allude to a possible defamation claim when they knew they would never file one. If you’ve already said X didn’t happen, what’s the point of that sentence?
My mistake! Sorry for misunderstanding your point, Jason. I really appreciate you clarifying here.