I think you may be assuming in part that the plaintiff is at least a limited purpose public figure and would have to prove actual malice rather than mere negligence. One has to show negligence to collect on a lot of torts. Yes, there are extra/early screening mechanisms because of abusive use of defamation suits, but those exist in other areas too—like medical malpractice, qualified immunity, etc.
The flipside is that US judgments can be truly eye-popping. I have no love lost for Guliani and even less for Alex Jones, but it’s hard for me to accept that compensatory damages for people telling obvious lies about someone should approach an order of magnitude higher than they would likely be for tortiously killing the person (e.g., by speeding). So lower risk than most other places, but the liability if you lose can be devastating.
Are Nonlinear and its employees LPPFs here? I’m not opining beyond noting that is non-obvious to me. One could view this more as a dispute over, e.g., alleged non-provision of vegan food to staff, which doesn’t strike me as a matter of public concern.
This is a weaker defense than it sounds: a statement can be true while also not turning out to be something you can convince a court is most likely to be true.
I think you may be assuming in part that the plaintiff is at least a limited purpose public figure and would have to prove actual malice rather than mere negligence. One has to show negligence to collect on a lot of torts. Yes, there are extra/early screening mechanisms because of abusive use of defamation suits, but those exist in other areas too—like medical malpractice, qualified immunity, etc.
The flipside is that US judgments can be truly eye-popping. I have no love lost for Guliani and even less for Alex Jones, but it’s hard for me to accept that compensatory damages for people telling obvious lies about someone should approach an order of magnitude higher than they would likely be for tortiously killing the person (e.g., by speeding). So lower risk than most other places, but the liability if you lose can be devastating.
Are Nonlinear and its employees LPPFs here? I’m not opining beyond noting that is non-obvious to me. One could view this more as a dispute over, e.g., alleged non-provision of vegan food to staff, which doesn’t strike me as a matter of public concern.
My statement stands even on a negligence standard. It’s even harder to sue as a pubic figure, but truth is an absolute defense regardless.
This is a weaker defense than it sounds: a statement can be true while also not turning out to be something you can convince a court is most likely to be true.
Unlikely, but to the extent it’s true it mostly favors the defendant. Burden of proof is on the plaintiff.