Archive for November, 2009
Next Entries »Dueling and defamation
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009Before defamation lawsuits, there was dueling. Apparently, in 17th and 18th Century Europe it was regarded as a civilised way of protecting one’s honour, “since the alternatives were sneak attacks and brawls” writes Daniel Solove in his book The Future of Reputation. Still, thousands of people were killed in them. What I hadn’t realised was […]
Warning for defamation defendants
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009The job of the defendant in a defamation jury trial (often the media) is to convince the jury that ordinary reasonable people will not think less of the plaintiff after being exposed to the material alleged to be defamatory. You might think it will probably be enough to convince the jurors themselves, who no doubt […]
Trivia question for privacy law geeks
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009No doubt you’ve heard of the famous 1890 Harvard Law Review article “The Right to Privacy” by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, which paved the way for the privacy tort in the US and has been described as the “most influential law review article of all”. But do you know what they wrote before that? […]
Price’s Journalistic Aphorism #21
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009The news should be made as interesting as possible, but no more. (With apologies to Einstein, who’s often quoted as the source for the saying that “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”. Ironically, it seems he didn’t say that at all, but something much less simple: “It can scarcely be […]
Privacy and reputation
Wednesday, November 11th, 2009Two interesting developments in the tug-of-war between privacy and defamation. The first comes in a UK injunction case. Justice Tugendhat granted an injunction to a celebrity of some sort (or at least, someone with “some public reputation”) restraining the publication of information about his encounters at his home with a prostitute some ten years ago. […]
Upcoming seminar on the Internet and suppression issues
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009The Law Commission, InternetNZ and the Ministry of Justice are hosting a seminar on the Internet and the courts. It will be looking at issues such as: • Undermining of suppression orders • Lack of jurisdiction over material hosted outside NZ • Online discussion of crimes and trials potentially being a contempt of court • […]
Libel games
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009London is known as the libel capital of the world. But I was chatting to Melbourne Law School professor Andrew Kenyon last week, and he said that there is a country whose defamation laws are even more plaintiff-friendly than England’s: Australia. US-based internet game company Ebony [ooops, it’s Evony, as Russell points out in the […]
Just as long as you’re not “impugning Parliament”…
Friday, November 6th, 2009Another part of Justice Dobson’s decision in Leigh (discussed below) revolves around the court’s anxiousness not to involve the courts in any impugning of Parliament. He rules that Ms Leigh can’t use Trevor Mallard’s attack on her in Parliament during Question Time to support her case. There is good authority for this rule. One is […]
Are too
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009Remember Erin Leigh? She was working on contract on a climate change communications strategy for the Ministry for the Environment when Clare Curren, another communications adviser, was appointed to oversee her work. Ms Leigh left. A political shitstorm blew up the following year. Was Ms Curren’s appointment politically motivated? Was it really about ideological disagreements […]
Free speech by the numbers
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009In case you were wondering what the First Amendment was all about, US Court of Appeals judge and law and economics whizz Richard Posner has the answer: Ax – Bx = -(pH / (1 + d)n + O)x where the xs are subscripts denoting derivatives and relate to potential strictness of regulation; the n is […]
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