So holds Sandler v. Calcagni, a federal district court decision from last week; the court applied Maine law, but in a way that's likely to be echoed in other cases.
Historically, book publishers have been held liable for defamation in the materials they publish, generally on the theory that they know or at least should know of the defamation. But the court in Sandler held that these sorts of Internet self-publishing services are not liable, because they don't review the manuscript but just print it, and they therefore don't know or have reason to know of the possibly defamatory content within the book. The court also applies a similar analysis to the plaintiffs' disclosure of private facts and false light invasion of privacy claims.
Sounds like a sensible and not very surprising application of general negligence principles, but because such decisions about what's "reasonable" are often pretty mushy and hard to predict as a matter of principles, I thought this particular decision -- which I expect will become a fairly influential precedent -- was worth noting.
Not being a lawyer, I find this interesting. I assume "will become a fairly influential precedent" means something like "will be cited a lot" and does not mean "will cause future decision that otherwise would have gone the other way to go this way"?
After all, few people would think it reasonable to sue the manufacturer of a printer that a slanderer bought, right? Apparently someone thought it reasonable to sue the owner of the printer a slanderer rented, though.
I found it interesting, however, that the publisher reserved the right in the "Author Publishing Agreement" “not to accept a submission upon
receipt.” If it reserved such a right, what did it do to decide whether to exercise that right? Examine the manuscripts? The existence of this right in its form of agreement weakens its argument that it is more or less powerless to stop defamatory material from being published.
Also, the court seems to adopt a standard for negligence based on what the court perceived was feasible for the defendant. But the defendant set itself up to make any examination of what it published infeasible. It could have set itself up to review manuscripts--but that would have affected its profits, of course. That should not be a defense to a negligence claim, and usually isn't.
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