Teacher Loses Defamation Lawsuit Against Student Journalist
from the quite-the-lesson dept
One of the points of a student newspaper is to teach kids about journalism, and it looks like one student at Churchill High School in Nevada got quite the lesson when the school's music teacher sued the student for defamation, after an article that was critical of the music teacher was published. Thankfully, a judge has dismissed the lawsuit, noting that "nothing written by the student was false, defamatory or negligent." Many people seem to feel that anything they don't like that's published about them must be defamation, but that's not how it works. Even so, it seems pretty extreme for a teacher to go so far as to file a lawsuit against a student journalist. Nice to see that this lawsuit went nowhere fast.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: defamation, journalism, schools, student, teacher
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What about costs?
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It also states that the student has already graduated and is a freshmen in college. Plus, the teacher sued the principal and the superintendent, among others, so the student would have allies in the administration who wouldn't let the teacher get away with failing a student for writing an article that had nothing to do with the student's performance in her music class.
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IOW: troll fail.
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My search skills are very good. Apparently yours are better. Do you have a link to the original article?
Even without the article in hand, however, my question is still relevant. Would the comments here have changed in tenor if the offending article was readily available for all to read and was palpably libelous? I would like to think the answer would be yes, but having read so many First Amendment absolutist comments in the past I do wonder how the tension between the First Amendment and libel law would play out here.
BTW, while I believe you misunderstand my motivations, I must take issue with your use of the phrase "out of the community". It suggests a group of like mindset, which is anything but accurate. More properly the phrase should have been "out of some members of the community".
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Looks to me as though the teacher needs to attend anger management classes. I find it refreshing that the law actually works from time to time. In this case the plantiff was wrong and the case was thrown out.
Archey claimed defamation and sued MacLean's faculty advisor, the principal, the superintendent and a local newspaper that picked up the story.
http://www.mynews4.com/story.php?id=25100&n=122
District Judge William Rogers threw the case out under Nevada's "anti-SLAPP" statute, which protects people from suits designed to stiffly discussion of public issues.
http://www.splc.org/newsflash.asp?id=2124
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You criticize the teacher, and perhaps criticism is warranted. Again, however, it is hard to judge whether or not there was any merit to what she decided to do without at least having read the original article by the student.
Regarding why the judge "threw the case out", I generally find that the best evidence of such things is a copy of the court decision itself, and not a simplistic commentary on a website where I am unable to judge the accuracy and completeness of what is said.
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I do not rely on news accounts about Supreme Court decisions. I read the actual decisions.
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There is much to be said for acutally reading the source documents, which in this case are the original article and the court's opinion. A copy of the original article is now in hand. It would be nice to see a copy of the court's opinion to understand what was before the judge and why he ruled as he did.
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+2 trolling.
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Teacher loses Defamation case
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Re: Teacher loses Defamation case
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Not any more
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"palpably libelous"
The judge in this case didn't even let it get that far. He ruled that the lawsuit was baseless and rejected it per se. If the teacher were to appeal this ruling the "actual damages" standard would have become relevant.
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McLean's original article
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Re: McLean's original article
I now understand why the teacher became upset since the article does intimate dishonesty (perhaps even incompetency) on her part. At the same time, however, I did not read anything in the article that I would view as palpably defamatory, i.e., a statement that is manifestly false.
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AC -> "the article does intimate dishonesty (perhaps even incompetency) on her part"
Statement of fact is not defamatory, but you knew that.
The lawsuit was a sham and the judge ruled correctly.
In some cases the plantiff and their attorney should be subjected to sanction and or fine for such frivolous filings.
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How you can say that the lawsuit was a sham and the judge ruled correctly on the very limited information that is available eludes me entirely. Maybe your conclusion is valid (or perhaps not), but in the absence of what was before the judge your's is little more than an unsubstantiated opinion.
Importantly, I have not expressed an opinion on the merits or demerits of the lawsuit since I have had exposure to only a small amount of information.
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original choirgate article here
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