Mother Jones Wins Ridiculous SLAPP Suit Filed By Billionaire... Who Still Claims Victory
from the silencing-the-press dept
Mother Jones, the well-known, politically-focused publication, has prevailed in a ridiculous SLAPP suit filed by billionaire Frank VanderSloot. VanderSloot was upset about a 2012 profile that Mother Jones published about him, his multi-level marketing, dietary supplement company Melaleuca, and the millions of dollars he was donating to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. VanderSloot insisted that the article was defamatory, though you'll have to squint really hard to figure out where and how. You can read the link above, or the court's full ruling to get all of the background. In short, though, most of it came down to the question of whether or not VanderSloot engaged in "gay-bashing" in attacking a local Idaho reporter who had exposed some problematic behavior of the Boy Scouts, involving a local leader who was accused of molesting boys. The Mother Jones article used that incident as a key point in its story about VanderSloot, describing some advertisements VanderSloot had taken out, which attacked the earlier story about the Boy Scouts, as "gay bashing" because the ads focused on the fact that the reporter in those original articles, Peter Zuckerman, was gay.The ruling even gets into a down-in-the-weeds discussion over whether or not anyone would take the term "gay bashing" to literally mean physically hitting someone, as opposed to the obviously colloquial notion of just verbally attacking someone (amusingly, the court points to at least some evidence that VanderSloot himself had referred to negative articles about himself as "Frank-bashing" suggesting that VanderSloot knows damn well what "bashing" means). Either way, it seemed pretty clear that this was a SLAPP suit -- a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. It appears that billionaires have a habit of filing such things against people who say not nice things about them. There are lots of indications that this was a SLAPP suit. Tellingly, VanderSloot's lawsuit claimed $74,999 in damages. That's exactly $1 less than the $75,000 amount that would qualify the lawsuit for "diversity," meaning that Mother Jones would likely be able to remove it from a local Idaho court (where VanderSloot's company is a major advertiser and employer) to a federal court (possibly in California -- where there's a strong anti-SLAPP statute).
You might have figured this out already, but Idaho has no anti-SLAPP statute.
Mother Jones and its insurance company ended up having to spend over $2 million defending against the lawsuit, and it seems pretty clear that VanderSloot was just trying to silence (or at least punish) reporters who criticized him. Partway through the lawsuit, he apparently added Zuckerman to the lawsuit (as noted above, he had been a reporter at the Idaho Post Register, where he'd written about a Boy Scout scandal). In response to those original articles, VanderSloot's company had taken out ads about Zuckerman in the paper, mentioning his sexuality and questioning his ability to fairly cover the Boy Scout story. However, the actions, once again, showed how someone with lots of money can file these lawsuits and really mess up the lives of people they just don't like:
At one point, Zuckerman was subjected to roughly 10 hours of grilling by VanderSloot's lawyers about every detail of the controversy in Idaho Falls, including the breakup with his boyfriend of five years. (VanderSloot also threatened to sue the ex-boyfriend, backing off only after he recanted statements he'd made about the Boy Scouts episode.) As the lawyers kept probing, Zuckerman broke down and cried as he testified that the time after the ads appeared was one of the darkest periods of his life. VanderSloot, who had flown to Portland for the occasion, sternly looked on. (His lawsuit against Zuckerman is ongoing.)And then there were things like this:
And that wasn't the end of it. VanderSloot's legal team subpoenaed the Obama campaign, which had run ads naming him as a major Republican donor. Apparently they believed we had somehow fed the campaign that information—never mind that our article, and the Federal Election Commission data that prompted it—was on the internet for anyone to read.While the case against Zuckerman is still ongoing, the court totally dismissed the case against Mother Jones (and its CEO who had put up a snarky tweet linking to the article), properly noting that none of the statements in question come close to defamation, as they're all protected opinion or hyperbole.
When officials from the Obama campaign refused to turn over their records—offering to confirm under oath that there had been no communication between them and Mother Jones—VanderSloot's lawyers dragged them into court, resulting in the spectacle of a major GOP donor seeking access to the Democratic campaign's emails. His lawyers did the same thing to a political researcher who had gathered information on VanderSloot and who also had no connection to Mother Jones.
At the end of the lawsuit -- for no clear reason -- the judge, Darla Williamson, makes it clear that even though she's tossing the defamation claims, she really does not like Mother Jones' brand of journalism. It's not at all clear what that has to do with anything, but she notes that she finds its "reporting styles, and indeed the general trend in political journalism, troubling." Bizarrely, based on this little aside, VanderSloot himself has claimed he's pleased with the judge's ruling, despite the fact that he lost on every count. He's also announced that he's creating a $1 million fund to sue other media outlets that he determines are siding with the "liberal" agenda and attacking conservatives. In fact, he's announced that the ruling has vindicated himself. That link also ridiculously claims that he only lost on "technicalities." That's true if "technicalities" means "filing defamation claims over non-defamatory statements."
In response to the decision, VanderSloot said, “I feel absolutely vindicated. The judge gave us much more than a jury could have ever given us. This case was never about money. Our attempt was to vindicate our good name and to point out what type of sleazy journalism that Mother Jones put out to attack conservative positions. In our case we made a large donation in support of Mitt Romney and so they attacked me to punish me for the donation. The judge made it clear that is what happened here and that Mother Jones has little regard for the truth in its attempts to smear people it disagrees with. This case will not need to go to a jury. We are happy with that. A jury could not have given us a bigger win. We got more than what we hoped for from the court.”All this seems to confirm that this was nothing but a SLAPP suit from the beginning. Note that he doesn't care that he's lost the actual lawsuit and that his claims of defamation were shown to be flat out wrong. He's still pleased, because the judge didn't like Mother Jones' style. It's likely he's also pleased that the company had to waste time, money and resources to fight this lawsuit. And now he's establishing a fund to help do the same sort of thing to others.
Tom Clare, one of VanderSloot’s lawyers, stated, “This case was never about financial damages. It was about setting the record straight. We were going to ask the jury to award only $1 in damages, but the Court’s conclusions regarding Mother Jones’ ‘skewed’ and ‘biased’ reporting about Mr. VanderSloot are far better than any $1 verdict. It is great to get this result. My client has been totally vindicated.”
Once again, it's stories like these that demonstrate why we need a strong federal anti-SLAPP law as well as strong state-by-state anti-SLAPP laws that would allow those sued in these kinds of lawsuits to have them dismissed quickly, and to get back their legal fees.
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Filed Under: defamation, frank vandersloot, free speech, journalism, mitt romney, peter zuckerman, slapp suit
Companies: mother jones
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'Losing' the battle, but winning the war
Yes, I imagine he is pleased, but it has nothing to do with 'vindication'. The lawsuit was about sending a message of what he is willing to do to anyone he doesn't like, by making an example of someone who displeased him.
Winning was never the goal, it was all about the message, and the $1M fund is simply his way of throwing down the gauntlet and daring any one else to say anything bad about him in the future, knowing that he is willing and able to do the same thing again, and again, and again if need be.
Chalk this up to yet another example of why the US really needs a strong federal anti-SLAPP law on the books.
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Re: 'Losing' the battle, but winning the war
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Vastly better way to prevent abuse is get rid of billionaires. Tax them out of existence. Easy to do, popular, guaranteed to work, and would have good effects every way.
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Re: Vastly better way to prevent abuse is get rid of billionaires. Tax them out of existence. Easy to do, popular, guaranteed to work, and would have good effects every way.
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Re: Re: Vastly better way to prevent abuse is get rid of billionaires. Tax them out of existence. Easy to do, popular, guaranteed to work, and would have good effects every way.
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Re: Re: Re: Vastly better way to prevent abuse is get rid of billionaires. Tax them out of existence. Easy to do, popular, guaranteed to work, and would have good effects every way.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Vastly better way to prevent abuse is get rid of billionaires. Tax them out of existence. Easy to do, popular, guaranteed to work, and would have good effects every way.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Vastly better way to prevent abuse is get rid of billionaires. Tax them out of existence. Easy to do, popular, guaranteed to work, and would have good effects every way.
they rarely arise spontaneously out of nothing, there are a legion of others working on the same problem, some of them taking this tack, some that...
*someone* has to be 'first to file' (both literally (as in literally) and figuratively (figuratively still means figuratively, right ?)...
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Re: Re: Vastly better way to prevent abuse is get rid of billionaires. Tax them out of existence. Easy to do, popular, guaranteed to work, and would have good effects every way.
What would you replace capitalism with? Communism? Socialism?
Both of those systems tend to fail because of ingrained human instincts of self preservation. Capitalism uses those instincts to it's advantage.
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Re: Re: Re: Vastly better way to prevent abuse is get rid of billionaires. Tax them out of existence. Easy to do, popular, guaranteed to work, and would have good effects every way.
Both of those systems tend to fail
Most of Europe seems to be doing as well as anyone and they're socialist. Canada is trucking along just fine as far as I can tell and they're certainly more socialist than the US, though I don't pay a lot of attention to Canadian politics.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Vastly better way to prevent abuse is get rid of billionaires. Tax them out of existence. Easy to do, popular, guaranteed to work, and would have good effects every way.
None of those are true socialist systems, they are capitalist systems with socialistic tendencies. You can still raise capitol, start a manufacturing business and accumulate personal wealth in those places. In a true socialist system everything is owned by everyone and profits are distributed equally. In a communistic system everything is owned by the state and living wages are (supposedly) equal.
China has given up on their great socialistic experiment and has been slowly embracing capitalism because it gives the masses something to work towards.
The USSR failed because the workers did as little as possible since there was no additional rewards for going the extra mile.
PS: I am not a student of economics at all, so I could be way wrong here, but this is how I see it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Vastly better way to prevent abuse is get rid of billionaires. Tax them out of existence. Easy to do, popular, guaranteed to work, and would have good effects every way.
If that is the definition, then there is not and has never been a socialist nation, so it's not a very useful definition. I prefer to use one that describes some actual societies.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Vastly better way to prevent abuse is get rid of billionaires. Tax them out of existence. Easy to do, popular, guaranteed to work, and would have good effects every way.
I paraphrased a little, but yes, that's the definition:
Here is Merriam-Webster's definition:
Communism is basically an extreme version of socialism where no property ownership exists whatsoever. Here is a good comparison:
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Communism_vs_Socialism
...then there is not and has never been a socialist nation
China certainly attempted to become a socialist society. Unfortunately, it forced them to isolate their country from the world to try to achieve it. It seems that the experiment failed seeing that they have since embraced capitalism with a fever.
And yes, I agree that that there never has been or will ever be a truly socialistic nation. It doesn't seem to be realistic possibility to me. Humans need not only reward for hard work, but also the possibility of a better personal future.
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Re: Re: Re: Vastly better way to prevent abuse is get rid of billionaires. Tax them out of existence. Easy to do, popular, guaranteed to work, and would have good effects every way.
No it doesn't. Capitalism doesn't leverage the instinct for self-preservation at all. What capitalism leverages is the predatory nature of some human beings.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Vastly better way to prevent abuse is get rid of billionaires. Tax them out of existence. Easy to do, popular, guaranteed to work, and would have good effects every way.
Mixed economies tend to do better than those skewed either towards capitalism or towards socialism. What you really want is a dual system where one feeds the other. It's why I'm keen on Middle-Out.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Vastly better way to prevent abuse is get rid of billionaires. Tax them out of existence. Easy to do, popular, guaranteed to work, and would have good effects every way.
Indeed. I can't think of any pure "-ism" that is actually a good thing (I also can't think of any pure "-ism" that has ever been successfully tried).
The only rational way is to have a mongrel system. This is the primary strength of the way the US was set up: it was always intended to be a mongrel system that incorporates aspects of capitalism, socialism, etc...
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Re:
"Easy to do"... LOL.
You still have never explained where or how you would determine what constitutes "too much wealth" other than the inference that it is more wealth than you currently have.
You also have never explained how you would spin this notion so it wouldn't be construed as a "success tax".
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Darla Williamson
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Re: Darla Williamson
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Lawsuit
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Re: Lawsuit
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It's like a teacher breaking up a fight and telling the victim they deserved to be picked on by bullies because the teacher does not like how they dress or act.
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