Libel laws in America

[Scarabin]

Watching the Republican Party's primaries prompts me to ask what are libel laws like in America? In Australia a successful defense to a libel case requires that the allegation(or libel) be true and that publication is in the national interest.

[jdeegan]

:P Well, we are getting better over time. You should have heard the political invective 100 or 150 years ago here in the colonies. Circa 1876: "Ma, Ma where's Pa? Gone to the White House, haw, haw ,haw". The rumor was that former president Grover Cleveland running for another term, and an enormously fat man, had somehow fathered an illegitimate child. Perhaps he did, but there was no possibility of an incriminating little black dress with certain stains.

[Vampyr]

Watching the Republican Party's primaries prompts me to ask what are libel laws like in America? In Australia a successful defense to a libel case requires that the allegation(or libel) be true and that publication is in the national interest.

 

The US, unlike Australia and Great Britain and, for all I know, most Commonwealth countries, has a constitutional amendment regarding freedom of speech.

[barmar]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libel#United_States

The 1964 case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, however, dramatically altered the nature of libel law in the United States by elevating the fault element for public officials to actual malice—that is, public figures could win a libel suit only if they could demonstrate the publisher's "knowledge that the information was false" or that the information was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not". Later Supreme Court cases dismissed the claim for libel and forbade libel claims for statements that are so ridiculous to be clearly not true, or that involve opinionated subjects such as one's physical state of being.

[nigel_k]

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan is the key case in the US, essentially making it very difficult for a public figure to succeed in a defamation action. In other countries based on the English legal system it is much easier, almost ridiculously easy. There are defences of truth or 'honest opinion' but they are quite hard for the defendant to establish. Britain does have constitutional protection for freedom of speech (the European Convention on Human Rights) this has not led to much change in defamation law. But damages are not high and legal costs are significant so there is a practical disincentive to sue.

[phil_20686]

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan is the key case in the US, essentially making it very difficult for a public figure to succeed in a defamation action. In other countries based on the English legal system it is much easier, almost ridiculously easy. There are defences of truth or 'honest opinion' but they are quite hard for the defendant to establish. Britain does have constitutional protection for freedom of speech (the European Convention on Human Rights) this has not led to much change in defamation law. But damages are not high and legal costs are significant so there is a practical disincentive to sue.

 

This is actually an incentive to sue if you are a major co-orporation and they are a minor science blogger. 5 appeals to get to the ECJ, even if you keep losing. Its true that the judge can deny you leave to appeal if he feels that you are using it unfairly, but in practice it is very rare to be denied the right of appeal to a higher court.

 

The most ridiculous thing about the british libel law is that you can sue someone in britian if your reputation in britian was damaged, even if neither party is a British citizen. There was talk of changing this before the great recession but I don't know if anything happened.

 

It has resulted in some truly ridiculous cases, there was something like the south african chiropractors association suing a swiss journalist in Britain for something he wrote claiming chiropractors had no meaningful health benefits.

 

Edit, wikipedia has a good article on libel tourism, which has some examples of this type of thing in england.

[Vampyr]

It has resulted in some truly ridiculous cases, there was something like the south african chiropractors association suing a swiss journalist in Britain for something he wrote claiming chiropractors had no meaningful health benefits.

 

If you mean Simon Singh, he is British.

[phil_20686]

If you mean Simon Singh, he is British.

 

I was probably conflating Rachel Ehrenfeld, and Simon singh.I am not very good with names.

 

Khalid bin Mahfouz and two members of his family sued Rachel Ehrenfeld, an Israeli-born writer and United States citizen over her 2003 book on terrorist financing, Funding Evil,^[7] which asserted that Mahfouz and his family provided financial support to Islamic terrorist groups.^[8] The book was not published in Britain, although 23 copies of her book had been purchased online through web sites registered in the UK, and excerpts from the book had been published globally on the ABC News web site. Ehrenfeld claimed that the suit in England violated her First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution and chose not to defend the action. Instead, she countersued in the U.S.^[9] In his judgment Justice Eady criticised Dr. Ehrenfeld for attempting to cash in on the libel action without being prepared to defend it on its merits and specifically rebutted her suggestion of forum shopping. Eady ruled that Ehrenfeld should pay £10,000 to each plaintiff plus costs, apologize for false allegations and destroy existing copies of her book.^[10]

 

Eady has been internationally criticized for his perceived bias in the case and his general restrictive approach to free speech. Additionally, the libel laws which were applied are under scrutiny in England, where calls for libel law reform have increased since Ehrenfeld's case. Analyzing British libel law, the United Nations Human Rights Committee cautioned that: "practical application of the law of libel has served to discourage critical media reporting on matters of serious public interest, adversely affecting the ability of scholars and journalists to publish their work, including through the phenomenon known as "libel tourism." The advent of the internet and the international distribution of foreign media also create the danger that a State party's unduly restrictive libel law will affect freedom of expression worldwide on matters of valid public interest."

 

 

 

[Vampyr]

I remember the Ehrenfeld case. Shocking.

 

EDIT: I just read about Rachel's Law. LOL how humiliating for England!

[phil_20686]

I remember the Ehrenfeld case. Shocking.

 

When it comes to wasting public money, paying for court cases where neither party is british, and the book was not published in the UK, seems high on my list.