From Arthur v. Offit (E.D. Va. Mar. 10, 2010) (some paragraph breaks added):
This action arises out of a brief passage in a lengthy magazine article profiling Defendant Paul Offit, M.D., a Philadelphia pediatrician and infectious disease specialist.Plaintiff Barbara Loe Arthur (also known as Barbara Loe Fisher) is the co-founder and acting president of the National Vaccine Information Center (“NVIC”). NVIC is a non-profit organization founded in 1982 and is dedicated to the prevention of vaccine injuries and deaths through public education. Plaintiff is a public interest advocate, public speaker, and media source for information about mandatory vaccinations….
This action arises from an article published in the November 2009 issue of Wired and on its Internet website, Wired.com, entitled “An Epidemic of Fear: One Man’s Battle Against the Anti-Vaccine Movement” …. The article focuses on the public debate over mandatory vaccinations of infants, children and adolescents.
Ms. Arthur has filed suit claiming that a two-word quotation (“She lies”) in the 2009 Wired article constitutes a false statement of fact about her that will cause people to conclude she is not a person of honesty or integrity.
The article is a profile of Defendant Offit, who is a “leading national advocate for mandatory vaccination” and someone “to whom many in government, industry, and the media turn for information.” Offit is a physician employed by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and is a Professor and Chief of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He is also the co-inventor of a vaccination for rotavirus, a disease which causes severe diarrhea and dehydration in young children, sometimes resulting in hospitalization and/or death.
The article’s profile of Offit is placed in the larger context of the public debate over systematic vaccination of children recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including Offit’s advocacy in favor of the vaccine protocol and opponents’ often sharp criticism both of Offit’s position on this issue as well as of him personally. According to the article, “Offit has become the main target of a grassroots movement that opposes the systematic vaccination of children and the laws that require it,” claiming that vaccines can cause autism and/or otherwise injure children. In response, the article reports, Offit “boldly states — in speeches, in journal articles, and in his 2008 book Autism’s False Prophets — that vaccines do not cause autism or autoimmune disease or any of the other chronic conditions that have been blamed on them,” an assertion he “supports … with meticulous evidence.” As Plaintiff describes it in her Complaint, the article “depicts” Offit “as a lone and heroic pediatrician/scientist who is the primary public voice in favor of mandatory vaccination, a position described as rational and science-based.”
The article reviews in detail the history of how widespread vaccinations have eradicated diseases like smallpox, polio, rubella, measles, and the bacteria that causes Hib meningitis. The article also describes several recent scientific studies concluding that parents’ decisions to opt out of vaccination programs have resulted in increased outbreaks of serious diseases — including, for example, pertussis, commonly known as whooping cough — “a highly contagious bacterial disease that causes violent coughing and is potentially lethal to infants,” the incidence of which has increased from 1,000 cases in 1976 to 24,000 cases in 2004. The article also examines the possibility that parents in the anti-vaccine camp, who first see evidence of autism at the same age as many vaccines are administered § 18 to 24 months), are “ignor[ing] the old dictum ‘correlation does not imply causation’ and stubbornly persist[ing] in associating proximate phenomena.” And, the article addresses several studies in which “scientists have chased down some of th[e] theories” advanced by the anti-vaccine movement, but have not found any link between vaccines and conditions like autism.
The article observes that “[b]eing rational takes work, education, and a sober determination to avoid making hasty inferences, even when they appear to make perfect sense.” The article thus comes out “in favor of the general safety of vaccines and a presumed medical necessity for mandatory vaccination.”
In addition to an extended discussion of the merits of the vaccination issue, the article also describes the harsh personal attacks lodged against Offit by his opponents. Its first sentence states, “To hear his enemies talk, you might think Paul Offit is the most hated man in America.” As the article goes on to describe, Offit’s critics point to the royalty he receives for having co-invented the rotavirus vaccine as “Exhibit A in the case against” him, supposedly “proving his irredeemable bias and his corrupted point of view.” The article also describes how he has been physically threatened by critics, as well as how he is the subject of a hostile website (pauloffit.com) and how people regularly tamper with the Wikipedia entry about him.
It is in this context that, as part of the 7,500-plus word profile, a few paragraphs are devoted to one of his critics, Plaintiff Barbara Loe Arthur…. The article portrays Ms. Arthur as the anti-vaccine “movement’s brain” and describes her organization as “the largest, oldest, and most influential of the watchdog groups that oppose universal vaccination.” The article characterizes Ms. Arthur as a “skilled debater,” who “has long been the media’s go-to interview for what some in the autism arena call ‘parents rights’ ” and whose speech at an autism conference in Chicago was delivered with “characteristic flair.” In that speech, Plaintiff “mentioned Offit frequently” and “cast him as a man who walks in lockstep with the pharmaceutical companies and demonizes caring parents.” …
In response to [Arthur's] positions, Defendant Offit is quoted in the article as saying that ” ‘Kaflooey theories’ make him crazy” and that Plaintiff “makes him particularly nuts as in ‘You just want to scream’ ” because “She lies.” He goes on to say that Plaintiff “inflames people against me. And wrongly. I’m in this for the same reason she is. I care about kids. Does she think that Merck is paying me to speak about vaccines? Is that the logic?”
In her Complaint, Plaintiff contends that, Defendant Offit’s statement “she lies,” is defamatory and that he and the Magazine Defendants have published a false statement of fact and have committed defamation per se, causing her to appear “odious, infamous, and ridiculous.” …
[S]everal Fourth Circuit cases make clear that including a remark by one of the key participants in a heated public-health debate stating that his adversary “lies” is not an actionable defamation. Indeed, both the nature of the statement — including that it was quoting an advocate with a particular scientific viewpoint and policy position — and the statement’s context — a very brief passage in a lengthy description of an ongoing, heated public health controversy — confirms that this is a protected expression of opinion….
The importance of “evaluat[ing] complaints early in the process” in response to Rule 12(b)(6) motions has been emphasized by the Supreme Court and the Fourth Circuit in as a way to deal with “the recognized problems created by ‘strike suits’ and the high costs of frivolous litigation.” Moreover, because the defense of baseless defamation claims imposes an additional cost, in the form of potentially deterred speech, federal courts have historically given close scrutiny to pleadings in libel actions. See As a result, courts in Virginia and the Fourth Circuit routinely dismiss at the outset defamation claims that are based on constitutionally protected speech by media defendants….
In analyzing [whether a statement is an actionable false statement of fact or a constitutionally protected statement of opinion], courts must focus on both “the plain language of the statement” and “the context and general tenor of its message,” keeping in mind that the ” ‘verifiability of the statement’ ” is a touchstone “because a statement not subject to objective verification is not likely to assert actual facts.” A statement is therefore nonactionable as a matter of law when — considering its language, context, and tenor — the speaker is “plainly express[ing] ‘a subjective view, an interpretation, a theory, conjecture or surmise, rather than … claim[ing] to be in possession of objectively verifiable … facts.’ ”
In this case, the article’s quotation of Defendant Offit’s comment that Plaintiff “lies” cannot reasonably be understood to suggest, as the Complaint alleges, that Plaintiff is “a person lacking honesty and integrity … [who should be] shunned or excluded by those who seek information and opinion upon which to rely.” Rather, the context of the remark — in a lengthy article describing an emotional and highly charged debate about an important public issue over which Defendant Offit and Plaintiff have diametrically opposed views — plainly signals to readers that they should expect emphatic language on both sides and should accordingly understand that the magazine is merely reporting Defendant Offit’s personal opinion of Ms. Arthur’s views.
In particular, the language immediately surrounding the challenged statement, in which Defendant Offit decries “Kaflooey theories” that make him “want to scream,” is precisely the kind of “loose, figurative” language that tends to “negate[ ] any impression that the speaker is asserting actual facts.” Against this contextual backdrop, the declaration “she lies” is plainly understood as an outpouring of exasperation and intellectual outrage over Plaintiff’s ability to gain traction for ideas that Defendant Offit believes are seriously misguided, and not as a literal assertion of fact. In other words, the remark by Defendant Offit is, on its face, merely an ” ‘imaginative expression of the contempt felt’ toward his adversary,” which can only be viewed as “an impassioned response to the positions taken by [that adversary], and nothing more.”
From the perspective of Defendants [publisher and journalist], this impassioned response by Defendant Offit toward Plaintiff was itself illustrative of the rough-and-tumble nature of the controversy over childhood inoculations and therefore worthy of mention in the Wired article, which sought to highlight, among other things, the intense nature of the vaccine debate. Given that context, publishing the quotation from Defendant Offit that Plaintiff “lies” is simply not actionable….
Moreover, in the context of the Wired article, the statement “she lies” lacks the provably false content that is required to support a defamation action. Not only does Plaintiff’s claim of the statement’s falsity invite an open-ended inquiry into Plaintiff’s veracity, but it also threatens to ensnare the Court in the thorny and extremely contentious debate over the perceived risks of certain vaccines, their theoretical association with particular diseases or syndromes, and, at bottom, which side of this debate has “truth” on their side. That is hardly the sort of issue that would be subject to verification based upon a “core of objective evidence.”
The same prospect of litigation over unresolved — and perhaps unresolvable — scientific arguments was among the reasons that the accusations of lying in [an earlier case] were deemed to be nonactionable. Courts have a justifiable reticence about venturing into the thicket of scientific debate, especially in the defamation context.
Plaintiff may wish to defend in Court the credibility of her conclusions about the dangers of vaccines, the validity of the evidence she offers in support of those theories, and the policy choices that flow from those views — as well as her own credibility for having advanced those positions. These, however, are academic questions that are not the sort of thing that courts or juries resolve in the context of a defamation action. Rather, an actual statement of fact that is capable of being proven true or false is required as a matter of law. In this context, Plaintiff has not alleged such a statement and has therefore failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. An appropriate Order shall issue.
troll_dc2 says:
Would Offit have been on safer legal ground if, instead of saying “She lies,” he had said “She’s nuts”?
March 15, 2010, 6:53 pmMike S. says:
While it is good that the judge chose, correctly in my view, to let this be aired in the court of public opinion rather than in a jury trial, you have to wonder a little. The plaintiff has, apparently called the defendant irredeemably biased and corrupt, yet wants to sue over being called a liar in return. IANAL, but don’t lawyers have some obligation to tell a client she has not case, and not to file a suit whose objective seems to be to silence an opponent in a debate on policy? Shouldn’t plaintiffs and lawyers who file such cases at least have to pay the defendant’s costs? (I know that the judge can so rule; I also know that it almost never happens.) And shouldn’t one consider disbarring the lawyer who does this?
March 15, 2010, 6:54 pmAlan Gunn says:
It seems odd that we don’t have a one-word term to describe saying something untrue without casting aspersions on the honesty of the speaker. “Misstates things” may come close, but it’s awkwardly formal and seems to hint at dishonesty anyway. I read the court’s opinion as saying that people sometimes use “lie” to cover speaking untruths without necessarily meaning that the speaker knows they’re not true. Too bad the English court wasn’t that flexible in the Simon Singh “bogus” case.
March 15, 2010, 6:55 pmRoger the Shrubber says:
Wow. The level of badness you need to display to get disbarred is currently way, way, way worse than this. I don’t think the court’s ruling is entirely a foregone conclusion, although clearly the plaintiff had a tough case here.
In addition to being entirely wrong about vaccines, of course.
March 15, 2010, 7:01 pmMike S. says:
Roger,
Well, yes, I know. But should it be. Having to defend even a frivolous action is both expensive and very unpleasant. And if brought by a DA rather than a civil attorney you might be held in jail while awaiting the opportunity to defend yourself against a case so flimsy that a judge will throw it out within minutes of it coming before him after you have spent months in jail without bail.
On the other hand, maybe I underestimated the entertainment potential in this sort of suit. Perhaps, President Obama can sue both the hard Right for calling him a socialist and the hard Left for calling him a wimp. Or Senator graham can sue for being called a RINO and a Republican stooge.
March 15, 2010, 7:10 pmLe Messurier says:
Alan Gunn
We do have such a word, and the word is “bullsh*t”.
I recall, perhaps incorrectly, that some court, somewhere had in fact found that vaccines did NOT cause autism.
March 15, 2010, 7:18 pmDNJ says:
This made me think of how traditionally in the British House of Commons (I’m not sure the practice is the same now) it was out of order for a Member to saw that another Member’s statement was “false”, but permissable to say that it was “erroneous”.
March 15, 2010, 7:34 pmJoe says:
The Special Masters of the Vaccine Court have ruled in several cases that vaccines do not cause autism, most recently this past Friday. There have been several theories of causation presented to the Vaccine Court thus far and all ahve been found unproven.
http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/node/5026
March 15, 2010, 8:03 pmAnthony says:
It’s fascinating to compare this to the BCA vs Simon Singh case in the UK, where a big focus of the case is whether the phrase ‘happily promotes bogus treatments’ (in reference to using chiropracty to treat diseases such as colic) should be taken as implying that the BCA was being consciously dishonest (which Singh denies he was claiming). From this judgment, it looks like under US law Singh would be innocent even he was claiming exactly that…
March 15, 2010, 8:12 pmMoneyrunner says:
I am curious about the avoidance of this perfectly valid word “lie.” It’s not as if we have not heard it numerous times in the last few decades. Most of its uses were applied to the claims that Bush lied us into war. The other memorable use was the excuse that – in the case of Clinton – “everyone lies about sex.”
So what is it about “lie?” We know perfectly well that when Robert Samuelson says that “Obama misleads” us about health care he’s really calling him a liar. Why the circumlocution?
March 15, 2010, 8:21 pmAlan Gunn says:
Yeah, that’s close to what I was looking for. My mistake was only looking in the polite words section.
I doubt that Ms. Arthur was really lying, in the traditional sense; why would she devote all that time and energy to a cause she didn’t believe in? With someone like Kennedy, it could be cynical ambition of some sort, but Ms. Arthur’s story suggests sincerity combined with ignorance. I’m still unsure that we’ve got a good verb, though. While the content of what she says is indeed bullsh*t, if you say someone is bullsh*tting you seem to be suggesting that they are at least indifferent to the truth of what they’re saying, aren’t you?
March 15, 2010, 8:54 pmMalvolio says:
“Lie” means to knowingly state a falsehood. Samuelson (and many others) can authoritatively point out statements of Obama’s that were either false at the time they were uttered or (because they were in the nature of predictions or promises) became false over time, but Samuelson is not claiming to know what was in Obama’s mind at the moment he spoke.
When he promised to broadcast the health-care negotiations on C-SPAN, was he thinking “This promise is going to be easy to keep”? Was he thinking, “A year from now, no one will remember I said this”? “Jeez, I’m hungry, how long until dinner?” “Mwa-ha-ha, when I’m president, I’ll do whatever I damn well please!” Unless you have very very strong evidence, you should probably avoid the word “lie”.
March 15, 2010, 10:00 pmElliot says:
How about, “She’s wrong?”
March 15, 2010, 10:04 pmSteve2 says:
She wrongspeaks?
March 15, 2010, 10:13 pmBen Barros says:
Good opinion, but the court goes off the rails at the end on page 14: “but it also threatens to ensnare the Court in the thorny and extremely contentious debate over the perceived risks of certain vaccines, their theoretical association with particular diseases or syndromes, and, at bottom, which side of this debate has “truth” on their side. That is hardly the sort of issue that would be subject to verification based upon a “core of objective evidence.”" As noted above, courts have considered this issue, and have resolved it. This is a scientific issue, and can be resolved on the objective evidence. The court’s remark to the contrary, if taken at face value, would seem to suggest that courts should just throw up their hands when one party presents scientific evidence and the other presents woo.
March 15, 2010, 10:20 pmSoronel Haetir says:
When someone is unwilling to give a fair examination to evidence counter to their position I would in fact tend to think they are at least indifferent and possibly hostile to the truth. And given the conspiratorial responses I’ve seen to the opinions of the ongoing vaccine court proceedings I would say there is a pretty nice slice of the anti vaccine population that is actually hostile to the truth.
March 15, 2010, 10:46 pmLazarus Long says:
That is some big time medicine right there.
For some reason I’d trust the good Doctor over an “advocate”, thank you very much.
March 15, 2010, 11:13 pmNathanM says:
I agree that anti-vaccine are dangerously wrong, but I find it very hard to believe any substantial number of them are indifferent or hostile to the truth.
Parents are almost never indifferent to the health of their children. It’s hard to believe anti-vaccine parents are needlessly risking the painful, and easily preventable, death of a child out of anything but sincere, albeit deeply wrong, belief.
March 16, 2010, 1:20 amVisitor Again says:
This case reminds me of Eugene’s contention that the first amendment does not protect false speech.
It is often extremely difficult, if not impossible, to determine whether a statement is one of opinion as opposed to one of fact. That is compounded by the difficulty of determining whether the alleged falsehood is deliberate or not. That would go for both Dr. Offit’s statement that Ms. Arthur is lying and for Ms. Arthur’s own statements about vaccines.
In my view, the proposition that the first amendment does not protect deliberately false speech thrusts the courts into fact-finding and distinction-drawing that is itself antithetical to freedom of speech because the very process chills expression. It leads, too, to courts making ludicrous claims that a liar is not dishonest and does not lack integrity, that an accusation that a woman is a liar does not reflect on her integrity and honesty. A liar is a liar, and one who lies is dishonest and lacks integrity.
For an example of these difficulties, albeit in the different context of determining on a SLAPP motion whether a statement was intended to convey a threat of violence perhaps constituting hate speech, see the very recent opinions, majority and dissent, of the California Court of Appeal in D.C. v. R.R.
The statements of the anti-vaccine people and the Holocaust deniers are protected exression no matter how much scientific and/or historical evidence to the contrary there is and no matter what the motivation/intent of the speakers is. And the statements branding these people as liars are protected expression no matter whether they are regarded as statements of fact or of opinion. It’s just too bad that the courts have to go through intellectual contortions to reach the right result and often, as in the California case linked above, reach the wrong result. Either way, the process is definitely unfriendly to freedom of speech.
March 16, 2010, 2:10 amEric Rasmusen says:
Like Mike S., I am struck by the feebleness of the court opinion. The court takes a lot of words to say that the suit is frivolous, and then it doesn’t do anything about it. Isn’t this what Rule 11 is for? Why don’t courts make plaintiffs pay for the trouble they cause? The judges who dismiss frivolous suits without penalty bear a lot of responsibility for the injustice in our legal system.
March 16, 2010, 2:53 amneurodoc says:
“[S]everal Fourth Circuit cases make clear that including a remark by one of the key participants in a heated public-health debate stating that his adversary “lies” is not an actionable defamation.” If those several cases were all decided against Ps at the trial court level and none of the decisions were reviewed and ratified by the Fourth Circuit itself, I suppose those prior cases would be “persuasive,” but not “precedential.” If the Fourth Circuit had reviewed and ratified any of them, then from the get-go this libel claim had not a snowball’s chance in Hell.
If this claim had not been destined to fail because stating that an adversary “lies” in the course of heated debate may be seen as an expression of “opinion” rather than factual assertion, and hence not actionable defamation, I wonder if it might have failed for one or two other reasons. First, given the background facts (P a principle for years in a very acrimonious debate over vaccine safety, an issue of great public concern, one much covered by the media), might not the P been treated as a public figure and been required to prove NYT v Sullivan “malice,” which would be hard to do? And second, when parties have been going at it for a very long time, personally demeaning each other repeatedly, will more slack be cut for a D who uttered something arguably libelous about the P than if the P had not been dishing the nastiness themselves?
March 16, 2010, 9:21 amneurodoc says:
He would have been on the safest of all legal ground if he had never said anything of arguably personal nature about her, but “she lies” seems to have been safe enough, at least in the Fourth Circuit.
The contentions about vaccine safety do not reduce to a simple thumbs up or thumbs down matter, though this D would undoubtedly win over this P on the relevant science contentions if the scientific community were deciding it. But no court hearing a libel case is going to go far afield to determine scientific “truths.” That would be an enormously time-consuming/wasting and expensive for everyone undertaking, especially when the matter can be as easily disposed of on other grounds (e.g., “opinion”) as it was here. And if the scientific issues were at all complicated, that is not self-evident, then how clear a call could “liar” as libel ever be, since the speaker could sincerely believe what they maintained to be true was in fact true.
And that is why in some instances there is a qualified privilege to say/write what would otherwise be actionable, and sometimes even absolute privilege so that invididuals can tell malicious lies with impunity. (In Montgomery County, Maryland, girls falsely claimed that their track coach had fondled them, because they didn’t like him. Though it came out that the girls had conspired to lie for their malicious purposes, the Maryland Court of Appeals held that they couldn’t be found liable for libel, because they enjoyed an absolute privilege, one meant to serve a public purpose at the expense of individuals like the coach.)
March 16, 2010, 9:53 amsardonic_sob says:
You’re right. “Errs” is the closest I could think of, but that sounds pretty stilted and it isn’t often used in the active voice.
It needs to have something of the flavor of “mu,” which is a Japanese word that Discordians have appropriated to mean, “Your question cannot be answered in its stated form because it contains an inherent error of which you may or may not be aware.” For instance, assuming you don’t beat your wife and never have, it is a correct and non-misleading answer to the question, “Have you stopped beating your wife?” Logically the correct answer to that question is “No,” but that contains an incorrect implication which “mu” does not.
Likewise, our new word needs to mean, “This person makes assertions of fact which are either demonstrably untrue or so logically unlikely that it is not proper to assert them as facts, but I don’t know if it’s because they’re misinformed, they’re making an error of logic, or they’re actively trying to deceive others.”
March 16, 2010, 10:17 amsardonic_sob says:
I am the parent of an autistic child, and I would give anything if it could be true that thimerosal or some other component of vaccination was the cause of their autism.
Because then it would absolutely, positively, demonstrably not be my fault.
Now, logically, my wife and I know that it was not our fault anyway: we were not in the danger age zone for reproducing, she took her supplements, she didn’t smoke or drink, etc, etc. We did everything right.
But it’s very easy, in the long dark night, to say, “Remember when they had that terrible fever when they were a little baby and you didn’t take them to the hospital? Did you REALLY need to spend all that time in the physics lab hanging out when you were in college next to all that radiation equipment? SOMEHOW, THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT.”
If there is a more terribly damning phrase you can say to yourself than, “This is all your fault,” I pray I never find out what it is. It doesn’t matter that the fever wasn’t really terrible and little babies have fevers all the time, it doesn’t matter that you’d get more radiation from flying a few times a year than I got standing in that lab. Those words can make it almost unbearable to be alive.
While I will never, ever condone the statements and actions of parents who need this to be somebody else’s fault, let alone risk the lives of others by avoiding vaccination and inducing others to do so, I can’t say I don’t understand them, or how somebody could hang onto such ideas past all evidence and reason.
March 16, 2010, 10:49 amdearieme says:
You can argue that to make an inference of deliberate misbehaviour, and then to state that inference in public, is rather rash, unless you have evidence to that effect fall into your lap, as in the Climategate affair.
March 16, 2010, 12:17 pmFub says:
Syncretic
March 16, 2010, 1:09 pmhorsedog thieves!Martinned says:
I wonder why the court didn’t simply skip over the fact/opinion problem and dismiss the case on the grounds that it is protected under NYT v. Sullivan, i.e. that plaintiff did not state a sufficient case to meet the “reckless disregard or knowledge of falsehood” standard. Surely the court is on thin ice by saying that “she lies” is not a statement of fact, since – from a non-legal point of view – it clearly is. Why not take the easy way out?
March 16, 2010, 1:39 pmChris Travers says:
I notice in the court’s decision we have:
Rubella has been eradicated?
Heck, given the minor symptoms, I seriously doubt we know how widespread the illness currently is. I would be willing to bet that it is an illness which probably is very rarely diagnosed properly in the US. Even if the individual goes to the doctor, I would be very surprised if it isn;t misdiagnosed as something like “contact dermatitis.”
Evidently the author of the Wired article lies ;-)
March 16, 2010, 5:08 pmBecky says:
Good point Chris T. Am I the only one who sees a correlation between the discussion about climate change and the discussion about the MMR vaccine?
1. The science is settled
2. All the experts agree
3. Anyone who disagrees is a buck-tooth moron
4. Anyone who questions the science should consider themselves guilty of the extinction of the human race – or at least crimes of genocide.
5. One side is completely right, the other completely wrong and must be silenced for the good of humanity.
Considering how the whole climate change debated ended up, and considering the literally trillions of dollars at stake in the vaccine industry, I don’t think I’d be willing to demonize those who want to question the science.
And, please don’t try to convince me of your point of view on the substance of the debate, I’m not weighing in on that. I’m only pointing out the similarity of these debates.
March 16, 2010, 7:40 pmneurodoc says:
I too asked above whether the P didn’t qualify as a public figure under the circumstances, and thus wouldn’t have had to met a burden of proof she could not meet if she were to be awarded damages for libel. But as for “she lies,” the trial court said that in the Fourth Circuit it is pretty settled that “she lies” is only opinion, and thus did not give rise to actionable defamation. I guess the judge was confident that he wasn’t going to be reversed for going with “she lies” = opinion, whereas he couldn’t be as certain were he to go with NYT v. Sullivan as the reason to dismiss.
March 17, 2010, 7:37 pmRich Rostrom says:
Becky: Unlike climatology, vaccination and microbiology are easily examined in the laboratory. The systems under scrutiny are a lot simpler, and the effects happen much faster.
Besides which, the anti-vaxers and the warmenists are both making the same kind of claim: that apparently innocuous activity has potentially devastating consequences through complex and poorly understood mechanisms. Both are demanding very costly changes in important activity. (The costs being in one case increased risk of infectious diseases, and in the other $trillions in taxes, subsidies, added costs, new facilities.) Both use alarmist rhetoric.
Alan Gunn: “I doubt that Ms. Arthur was really lying, in the traditional sense; why would she devote all that time and energy to a cause she didn’t believe in?”
1) People lie on behalf of causes they believe in all the time.
March 18, 2010, 2:49 pm2) People work for causes they don’t believe in all the time, because it gets them money or status.