Court Tosses $11-Million Libel Lawsuit Brought By The 'King Of Bullshit News'
from the viral-crap-farm-wastes-everyone's-time dept
An $11-million defamation lawsuit brought against Buzzfeed by the head of a "news" agency has been dismissed by a New York federal court judge. Michael Leidig, who runs CEN (Central European News), didn't like being hailed as the "King of Bullshit News" by Buzzfeed in 2015. He sued Buzzfeed nine months after the article was published. Leidig, a UK citizen, may have hoped for a more British take on defamation law, but libel law works differently here in the United States.
Judge Victor Marrero said that under New York law Leidig had to prove “fault” on behalf of Buzzfeed and “either negligence or actual malice depending on the status of the libelled party”.
And unlike UK law, the onus in the US was on Leidig to prove the statements were false (rather than on Buzzfeed to prove they were right).
While the judge held that Buzzfeed’s reporting was backed up by evidence he said Leidig and CEN could offer no evidence to support the stories it reported which Buzzfeed said were fake.
At the center of the case were a handful of "news" articles created by CEN. Many of these made their way into a number of tabloids across the world, going viral in the way that fact-checked stories rarely do. The stories included a Chinese man becoming riddled with tapeworms after eating sashimi, a Russian man surviving a bear attack when his Justin Bieber ringtone scared the bear away, and Chinese citizens treating cabbages like pets.
Buzzfeed's long expose of Leidig's handcrafted crap could find nothing to back up the claims made in a number of CEN's biggest internet hits. As the court points out in its decision [PDF], CEN/Leidig claimed Buzzfeed made false statements in its article, but could not provide any evidence that actually countered Buzzfeed's reporting.
BuzzFeed argues that Plaintiffs cannot show the falsity of the allegedly defamatory statements, and thus Plaintiffs' claims must fail. The Court agrees. In the face of repeated instances where BuzzFeed points to specific evidence supporting the truth of the Article, Plaintiffs' sole rejoinder is that neither Leidig nor any CEN employee admitted to knowingly publishing "a fake news story" or to "add[ing] phony quotations to a story."
[...]
Apart from these statements, Plaintiffs provide no evidence that BuzzFeed's eight statements about the CEN stories are false. As such, no jury could find BuzzFeed's statements to be false.
Leidig and his lawyers piled vagueness on top of vagueness after Buzzfeed filed its response to Leidig's complaint, refusing to engage with Buzzfeed's counterarguments.
Plaintiffs' inability to identify a genuine dispute of material fact is best exemplified by their decision to contest only one of the over two hundred numbered paragraphs in Buzz Feed' s Rule 56. 1 Statement. For the remainder of the statements, Plaintiffs rely the blanket denial that "[i]n not challenging [BuzzFeed's] other 215 assertions of fact, [P]laintiffs do not mean to concede that any particular ones are relevant and material to the issues raised on this motion [.]"
At the top of this pile of vagueness is Leidig's cherry: an attempt to expand the claims of his lawsuit while failing to answer Buzzfeed's response. The court says this combination "dooms" the lawsuit and it won't help force Buzzfeed to "defend a moving target."
[W]ith discovery concluded, it is clear that Plaintiffs cannot meet their burden. Because the Court finds that Plaintiffs cannot satisfy the falsity element for any of the eight statements, the Court does not address BuzzFeed's alternative argument that Plaintiffs are public figures and would need to show that BuzzFeed made the statements with actual malice as to their falsity.
From there, the court addresses each of the eight viral CEN stories Buzzfeed claimed were false. In each case, Leidig was unable to refute Buzzfeed's reporting. The court's rejection of Leidig's bullshit defenses makes for a pretty entertaining read, thanks to a rarely-seen combination of legal terminology and tabloid subject matter.
Other than Leidig' s self-serving and discredited testimony, which is plainly insufficient to support a motion for summary judgment, see Celle, 209 F.3d at 188, Plaintiffs offer no evidence regarding the Cabbage Story's veracity.
[...]
Plaintiffs cannot even demonstrate that they investigated the kitten's status before writing the Pink Kitten Story. That is, Plaintiffs (once again) could not depend on their own reporting database to determine who wrote the story and who could verify its contents.
[...]
During his deposition, Leidig could not provide any details regarding the Nude Women Story, including the source of the quotes that were used in CEN' s reporting of the story.
[...]
Unsurprisingly, Leidig stated in his depositions that he does not know where the quotes in the Two-Headed Goat Story came from.
Fun stuff. I mean, not so much for Leidig, but for those of us following along. He can appeal this decision but it's not going to result in a win. However, it will result in more financial pain for Buzzfeed since it will be forced to defend itself against Leidig's baseless claims one more time. New York's weak anti-SLAPP law is no help here, so Leidig isn't going to be paying Buzzfeed's legal fees. Maybe this is all Leidig wants from the lawsuit: to annoy the entity that called him the King of Bullshit. It's definitely a bullshit lawsuit and it has hung around the court system for three years longer than it should have.
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Filed Under: defamation, free speech, libel, michael leidig
Companies: buzzfeed
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The proof is in the pudding, when the pudding is a myth
One or the other of these requires one party or the other to prove a negative. I thought the math people have proven that proving a negative was not possible.
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Re: The proof is in the pudding, when the pudding is a myth
You can prove a negative by proving a mutually-exclusive positive (ie, you can prove you didn't rob a liquor store if you have photographic evidence that you were somewhere else at the time the robbery occurred). Precisely how this works in UK law, I'm not quite sure; it certainly seems like the UK's system of defamation law is not very good, and this is probably part of the reason why.
As far as US defamation law, Leidig could (hypothetically) have proven Buzzfeed's statements false by producing original, primary-source reporting that proved the stories he reported were based in fact, not fabricated. If he had been able to do so, that would likely have satisfied the "prove the Buzzfeed claims were false" requirement for defamation. The next question is whether Leidig is a public figure; IANAL but I think that for the purposes of this story he probably is. That means that he would also have to prove actual malice: that Buzzfeed either knew its claims were false, or showed reckless disregard as to their truth or falsity. That is indeed a very high bar to clear (and the reason public figures are very seldom able to successfully sue people for defamation in the US).
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Re: Re: The proof is in the pudding, when the pudding is a myth
By inference
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Re: The proof is in the pudding, when the pudding is a myth
All The King of Bullshit News he had to do was prove that his stories were true. But they weren't true, because he's The King of Bullshit News. So he lost.
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Re: Re: The proof is in the pudding, when the pudding is a myth
Wasn't that Alex Jones?
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Re: The proof is in the pudding, when the pudding is a myth
Why do all of those stories sound like they were lifted from The Onion? Next we'll be reading about ISIS threatening to invade Russia in the winter.
And do we need to use a Leidigtector to find out if it's actually true?
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How bad do you gotta feel when even the low caste dark skinned whipping boy for the military industrial complex can claim a settlement when someone called him a liar and you fail??
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But he kind of "lucked" into his settlement, had it not been for the Hulk Hogan lawsuit, I doubt that he would have prevailed in his case against Gawker.
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Not sure why we gotta bring Shiva's caste and skin color into it, dude. The guy's an ass, but his ethnicity has nothing to do with it.
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Obviously not being the OP, I would say that Shiva himself was the one who always brought skin color and caste into every discussion about him, so why not add it in whenever there is a conversation about Shiva.
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Because "Shiva Ayyadurai does it, so that makes it okay" is legitimately terrible reasoning?
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I would agree that taken as simply as you put it, yes it is bad reasoning...
But why is it wrong to use his own words against him, he has overused those terms in attempting to boost his own political and personal aspirations, so why not continually call him out on his BS at every opportunity.
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When those words are about the color of his skin? Because it's racist.
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Is it always racist, no matter what the context is? Is it racist if Shiva says it?
What if it is used in a manner not to denigrate anybody on their race or socio-religious status, but instead, in this one instance, be used in order to call attention the the methods and means that Shiva used to help bolster his (not-really-much-of-a)political career?
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His ethnic identity and skin color played no role in his lawsuits against Gawker and Techdirt, even if he says otherwise. Nobody had any reason to reference those things in mocking Shiva Ayyadurai for his inability to prove he is the sole creator of email or his 57-point loss to Elizabeth Warren in the general election for a Senate seat. To bring up his ethnicity and skin color unprompted, and for no reason other than to insult Ayyadurai, is racist as hell.
You don’t need to insult the man over his ethnicity. Plenty of other reasons to insult him already exist.
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Doesn't matter how good your points are, if wrapped in crap
To bring up his ethnicity and skin color unprompted, and for no reason other than to insult Ayyadurai, is racist as hell.
Adding to that it's also super counter-productive and in fact helps him, as it allows him and anyone insane/stupid enough to still support him to dismiss any valid criticisms that may be in the same package as 'baseless claims my a racist fool'.
While I can somewhat understand the point even if I wouldn't' support it(he constantly tried to use his race as a positive and shield against others, why not point that out and use it against him?) ultimately it's likely to backfire on anyone doing so, and as there are a plethora of easier ways to insult and/or point out his flaws, it's better to avoid it as both racist(even if not intended as such it would be trivial to spin as such) and counterproductive.
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Other than the fact I didn't want to actually type his name...
Umm he did bring his ethnic identity and skin color into the lawsuits & the political race.
I don't hate him because he is indian, low caste, dark skinned...
I hate him because he is a horrible person, who loves to hide behind his 'outsider' identity while screaming everyone else is a racist out to get him.
I do enjoy how everyone jumped on the racist train right away.
Well he used it this way he must mean that...
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar kids, not a phallic replacement.
So many of you know the inner workings of my mind & what I must have meant... do you have a license for that privilege?
Do you have the proper merit badges to be able to speak for the gay nym or have you decided that you need to rush in and protect a horrible person who might be offended by my use of his own words?
What is the equation you used to figure out which one of us is more oppressed & deserves your protection from the mean mans words online?
I made an attempt to mock 1 moron who abused the courts with the other moron who abused the courts, pointing out one was 'successful'.
Pretty sure I wasn't wearing bedsheets & burning a menorah on his lawn, if your offended sorry but that is your hangup. You read more into what I said than what I meant to convey, brand me as racist and burn me at the stake.
” If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,"
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And by bringing it up to insult him, you played his game. Any criticism of Ayyadurai that you could have presented is now tainted, and were he so inclined, he could use that as proof that his critics are not critical of factual claims, but of his ethnic identity. (“See? They don’t hate me because I supposedly lied; they hate me because I’m a brown-skinned Indian!”)
Could’ve fooled me.
And you gave him a reason to keep yelling. (I’ll come back to this…)
I’m a White American male, so…maybe? ¯\(ツ)/¯
I am not trying to protect Shiva Ayyadurai. I am trying to tell you that you fell into a trap he set. Self-owns like this are avoidable.
Bad execution overrides good intent. You may have meant to mock the idiot mentioned in the article, but by bringing Ayyadurai’s race into the mix for no reason other than “I didn’t wanna say his name”, you failed at your mockery. I mean, just look at the discussion thread you started.
You do not need to be a member of the Klan or a White supremacist group to say something racist.
Okay, I’m gonna edit your OP in this discussion thread to show you something:
See the difference? Not only is Ayyadurai still identifiable without his name being mentioned, but it avoids the trap of bringing up his ethnicity unprompted and giving him the opportunity to yell about his critics are only criticizing him because of his ethnicity.
You played his game and you lost. Take the L, learn from it, and do better next time.
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And so you reduced him to his skin color instead, which is a super-not-racist thing to do.
Then say that, instead of just mentioning his caste and skin color.
I made no claim about what you meant, only about what you said.
I didn't call you a racist. I called your statement racist.
Maybe showing a little bit of introspection might be warranted here, instead of a wall of defensive ranting.
As I say so often: the purpose of language is communication. If you wish to communicate effectively, then you should listen to people when they criticize the words you use. If you say something that you do not intend as racist, and "everyone" (your word) says "That's racist," then maybe stop saying things that everyone interprets as racist.
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Oh God, are you seriously pulling a "how come he can say that and I can't" defense?
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The point of that comment / question must have went completely over your head, otherwise you would not have immediately jumped to the racist card. Not everything is black and white (wow, what a horrible phrase right now, but again not racist) and that there are many shades of grey. What you lack is the ability to look at a bit of context and instead you just jump to whatever conclusion you decide fits the best. All I was trying to do is point out that it may not be racist in every conceivable situation.
Second, "how come he can say that and I can't" defense? were not the words I used.... yep, just went back and checked that comment, I couldn't find anywhere where I typed those words, so I am kind of curious why you took what I said and turned them into something that fit your narrative?
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Shouldn't we respect the way he desires to identify himself?
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Oh, cool, a knock-off of the “attack helicopter” joke — and it’s just as shitty as the real thing!
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I understand. You only respect the rights of trannies.
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Re: Re:
What's wrong with respecting the human rights of trans people?
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Follow the thread and/or show me where I said otherwise
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You used the word "trannies" and the way you phrased your post makes it sound like you think respecting trans people's rights is a bad thing. If that wasn't your intent, too bad - it ain't about your intent, it's about how other people recieve and interpret what you say.
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I was suggesting that more than just they deserve respect.
"...it ain't about your intent, it's about how other people recieve and interpret what you say."
Then learn to read. We can't go out in public without offending someone, so I hope we don't lower the whole race to your level.
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If you want to know how I interpreted that comment, you could have asked me. The way I interpreted it goes like this: The second sentence reeks of contempt for the fact that I respect the rights of trans people, as if that respect either lessens my respect for the human rights of cis people (it doesn’t) or puts trans people on a pedastal (it doesn’t).
Thinking the “attack helicopter” joke, the “did you just assume my gender” joke, and all variants of both jokes are awful does not mean I believe you deserve to have your right of free expression taken away. But it does, however, mean I will use mine to criticize you for making bad jokes that help perpetuate distorted, disingenuous, contemptible, condescending, and generally hateful stereotypes of trans people because you think “ha ha trans people are weird” is the height of comedic wit.
And if you want to spread hate and distaste for trans people, I beg of you: Find a new joke. Even a Tim Allen sitcom is funnier — and slightly more original — than your material.
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"If you want to know how I interpreted that comment, you could have asked me."
If you wanted to clarify my intent, you could have asked me, instead, you were fearing for your life and had no choice but to shoot to kill to defend yourself. Better find yourself a new defense, the excuses from the thin blue line are wearing very thin.
P.S. How do you feel about Mike hurting Shivas' feelings regarding e-mail? Should Mike have just apologized regardless of his intent?
"If that wasn't your intent, too bad - it ain't about your intent, it's about how other people recieve and interpret what you say."
I don't recall you telling Mike this before he decided to fight the lawsuit. Apparently the Courts didn't agree with that sentiment either.
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P.P.S. Let me know how you interpret that comment.
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Thank you for telling me I no longer need to take you seriously.
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Feel free to interpret my comments how you like. You may even feel offended, should you desire. But might I suggest that in the future, when you are offended, just move on, you have no right to not be offended. Or file a suit, like Shiva did because Mike called him a fraud, a liar and a scammer. Ask Mike what the outcome was.
Your feelings aren't important, my intent is, you seem to have it backwards, which means I can dismiss anything you have to say
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Why bother? I can look it up here on Techdirt. And would you look at that: “Judge Throws Out Shiva Ayyadurai's Defamation Lawsuit Against Techdirt”.
Huh. Imagine that.
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"You only respect the rights of trannies."
You are reading an awful lot from that. Maybe get over your tranny complex.
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Well, it isn’t original, but it is at least less awful than the “attack helicopter” joke. 👍
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Kristen Worley and Lorimer Shenher delve into their journeys in their new books; ‘Woman Enough’ and ‘This One Looks Like a Boy’
https://www.macleans.ca/society/two-canadian-trans-authors-share-their-stories-of-struggle-an d-triumph/
You might find this useful to read
HTH
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i am a bit ambivalent about this. on the one hand, it certainly does not help to repeat such things, but in the other, it was actually central argument of Shiva's, and of his supporters'. A major, ridiculous, diversionary claim.
But yeah, this isn't about him, so a bit of a reach to use to poke fun at some other asshat. Regardless of intent, probably not the best to perpetuate such language.
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Well, he did politely ask everyone not to vote for the fake Indian...
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It appears that he now wants to do it to the whole country: he is running for US Senate. From what I can tell, he is running on the "Full-Bird" ticket.
He still claims to have invented e-mail, which is odd since I was using e-mail before he claimed to have invented it. Also he is working on a cure for cancer.
His web site is a truly appalling mess of javascript. No surprises there.
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#bebest
Come on bros. Just because Shiva uses those words dosent mean we have to. We can say he literally looks like a dried up old turd, without bringing race and caste into it.
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That sounds about right and/or terrible
a Russian man surviving a bear attack when his Justin Bieber ringtone scared the bear away,
To be fair I would totally believe that a Justin Beiber ringtone would scare away anything with good taste and working ears, so that story at least doesn't seem like much of a stretch.
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Re: That sounds about right and/or terrible
Yeah, I don't think the assertion that Bieber's voice is unbearable needs any corroboration.
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Famous
The European Commission Won’t save you here bitch!
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What caught my eye
When the judge says that it's unsurprising that you can't source the facts in one of your news articles, in a lawsuit where you're trying to prove that these articles are, in fact, based in truth, you know you're having a bad day.
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'Just... get out of my court.'
Other than Leidig' s self-serving and discredited testimony, which is plainly insufficient to support a motion for summary judgment,
Indeed, the judge was clearly not thrilled to be used in an attempt to punish someone for perfectly legal speech just because someone got their precious feelings (rightly) hurt, and did not seem to pull any punches in making that clear.
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So Buzzfeed, the King of Bullshit News in the U.S. was sued by Central European News, the King of Bullshit News in the U.K.?
Just another day in Insanityland.
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Not familiar with buzzfeed, I thought it was fox.
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