Defamation lawsuit, here we come: my hat is off to Attorney Robert Barnes
It’s not a MAGA hat (I don’t own one and have no plans to), but my metaphorical hat is off to Robert Barnes, who has taken the Covington defamation case pro bono:
On Fox and Friends Wednesday morning, Barnes, who is representing the families at no cost, explained that because the kids are private citizens and minors, anything someone says about them that is false can be libel, according to the law. Rather than proving malice, “all you have to prove is negligence,” he said…
Barnes said he was representing the families in a possible class-action lawsuit pro bono because libel lawsuits are difficult for average citizens to bring as they are very expensive. “They cost between a quarter of a million and a million dollars in legal fees to bring,” he explained. “So I wanted to equalize the playing field. These are people who couldn’t afford to bring this claim on their own behalf. That’s why I offered my services for free because somebody needed to stop this from reoccurring.”
The attorney stated he was giving the the libelers 48 hours to correct and retract their smears.
“Everybody now is on 48-hour notice. So by Friday everybody needs to retract and correct any false statements they have issued about these kids. That includes any major member of the media, that includes any major celebrity, that includes anybody with a substantial social media platform. If you’ve said anything false about these kids, they are willing to extend you a 48-hour time period — a period of grace consistent with their Christian faith — for you to, through confession, get redemption and retract and correct and apologize.”
The lawyer warned that if libelers don’t do this by Friday, they may be “a defendant in a lawsuit because those lawsuits will start to occur next week.”
We’ll see what happens.
I don’t think mere removal is enough, although I’m not sure of the law on that. Barnes says “retract and correct and apologize,” but that might just be what the families want rather than a legal condition for dropping a suit against a particular person.
More:
Barnes told the Fox and Friends hosts that he is representing three different groups of families: the kids “who were at the Lincoln Memorial who have been libeled”; families of kids who have been in some of the photos and had false statements made about them based on those photos; and “alumni who feel that their entire school and everything associated with them has been libeled and they too want to seek legal remedy for these people who refuse to correct, retract or make any apology for their false statements.”
I’m all for it.
I think that too many people on Twitter forget that they’re not just playing some sort of verbal one-upmanship game in which the person being most clever and most outrageously nasty wins. They are bullying, defaming, and threatening real people, and teenagers at that.
The same people doing the bullying and threatening probably consider themselves part of the anti-bullying crowd, and don’t even recognize themselves as doing what they profess to hate. They need to learn that when you defame and threaten real people as part of an online mob, there are consequences.
I agree with you 100% Neo. When will false witness, slander and defamation be taken seriously? Only when it costs people, I guess.
That they do not recognize themselves can be said about most aspects of leftism and Progressivism. Progressives project so much of the time; e.g., the Antifa whose actions are more like the Fascists they claim to hate than the people they attack.
“They need to learn . . . .” No, they need to be taught a lesson — many times over — and that’s very different. They will never learn as long as the people who are attacked by them refuse to fight back verbally, media-wise, legally, and unfortunately sometimes physically. To refuse to do so is to enable them further. Why should they quit when there are no negative consequences to their actions and they usually get their intended results. As Andrew Breitbart said: “War!”
“The same people doing the bullying and threatening probably consider themselves part of the anti-bullying crowd, and don’t even recognize themselves as doing what they profess to hate.” — Neo
To me, this is one of the major problems of our current worship of Hate Crimes: that people invert truth and falsehood, good and evil, right and wrong, and never see themselves as perpetrators of the same sins they attribute to others.
Leftists – double standards – etc etc etc.
Pulling out a small piece of a post I quoted on the Facecrime thread today:
“How is it OK to make a national news story out of not liking someone’s smile? Mocking someone’s smile is as bad as telling someone they have to smile more, and we’re all supposed to think the latter is blatantly offensive, right?”
One of the commenters at the PJ post mentions that the lawsuits should not be limited to the leftist pundits, but include any “conservative” writers who double-down and don’t apologize.
Works for me.
“. . . people invert truth and falsehood, good and evil, right and wrong, and never see themselves as perpetrators of the same sins they attribute to others.” [Aesop Fan @ 4:12 pm]
It’s not that they don’t see themselves as committing the same sin. It’s a method of attack which has become so systematized that it has a name. DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Opressor.
Good for Robert Barnes! It’s about time! This is a perfect case, too. These students are not public figures, and they are minors. The NY Times, WaPo, magazine writers, entertainment celebrities, and even members of Congress can’t hide behind the Sullivan ruling.
It won’t be enough. I don’t know if anything will be enough. The genie is way out of the bottle – when these kids are denied something important in the future, they won’t be told they’re being denied because of this, but it’ll always be out there.
And it’s true for all of us who don’t toe the appropriate line. I’m a nice person who wishes ill on no one, but I’m not a Leftist; at the moment I live in Texas and feel fairly free to Live While Republican, but we’re likely to move to the West Coast once we figure out where all our kids will be settling down, and at that point I have the choice of being brave, out, and proud like our host, or risking reputation and livelihood if something I say turns out to be a microaggression. I don’t like my chances.
And eventually perhaps one of them will be a Supreme Court nominee, and the deathless spawn of the likes of M. Hironoluluhito will have a grand old time retrieving their pitchforks to stick into him.
.
The thing with “passive-aggressive” is that the term itself is an irrefutable claim and a get-out-of-jail free card.
. . .
To the present posting: I wish to announce my agreement with all. Well said, and well done Mr. Barnes!. And thanks, Neo, for passing on the news.
T on January 23, 2019 at 5:03 pm at 5:03 pm said:
“. . . people invert truth and falsehood, good and evil, right and wrong, and never see themselves as perpetrators of the same sins they attribute to others.” [Aesop Fan @ 4:12 pm]
It’s not that they don’t see themselves as committing the same sin. It’s a method of attack which has become so systematized that it has a name. DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Opressor.
* * *
Thanks for the information. I am sure the Left’s leadership knows this tactic well.
The useful idiots, however, are probably clueless.