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Community Corner

Is Free Speech Alive & Well in Rye?

Recently, I have been threatened with a lawsuit by a person claiming I have defamed them both personally and professionally.  Since I did not graduate from Columbia Law School, I was forced to utilize the Internet to see how many years I will go to jail for and how much of my life savings I will lose.

 

Guess what?  I may still be able to keep my small, humble abode and also avoid cat food as my main meals. 

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“How can I accomplish?” you may ask.

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First off, the person who claims I have defamed them will need to show that my statements caused them harm.  I figure since the person who is accusing me of this harm has posted enough comments on several Rye-based sites that puts them in an unfavorable light, I could not have harmed them enough to cause additional damage to their reputation.  In addition, I feel that this person has posted under several alibis, and I am confident that once I subpoena the relative documents from the blog websites, I will be able to show that the comments made by this person caused the injuries; not the opinions that I posted.

 

As for his company, not only did I not make any defamatory comments about his company, the shareholders will need to show how any purported comments caused damage to the company’s reputation in the marketplace.  The best way to accomplish this would be to, for example, show that sales were impacted or that financing was limited as a result of comments made.  [This may conjure up Billy Preston’s  thoughts of  “Nothing from nothing leaves nothing…”]

 

But, ultimately I think the following defense will be the ace up my sleeve:

 

Claimant is incapable of further defamation – e.g., the claimant's position in the community is so poor that defamation could not do further damage to the plaintiff. Such a claimant could be said to be "libel-proof," since in most jurisdictions, actual damage is an essential element for a libel claim.

 

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