The parents of Nashville school shooter Audrey Hale say the 28-year-old was under a doctor’s care for an undisclosed “emotional disorder” before the armed attack that killed three children and three adults on Monday. Jim Ryan has the details.
State Rep. Alex Andrade discusses improvements he has made to HB 991, which has come under criticism from First Amendment advocates, media and conservative radio stations.
The 10th annual University of West Florida Dance Marathon raised $30,109.48 on March 25 in support of Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. All proceeds from the UWF event will be donated to Pensacola’s Studer Family Children’s Hospital at Ascension Sacred Heart. UWF senior Angelina DeFelix, executive director of UWF Dance Marathon, has the details.
And the full show:
So, anonymous equals one and one more equals corroboration, hence truth. What if the corroboration is anonymous, too? Just asking. This evidentiary thing sounds like a mini-grand jury, only no jury. Just a judge. For a defamation suit. Presumptions of malice or reckless intention? Why bother filing a suit? I guess that’s the point. As for “unintended consequences,” the bane of all legislation, will come.
Truly sorry for the three-fer, Rick, but I made a dangerous typo. Edler was *not* an “elected” official, of course, but a public official. God protect typos these days.
What an infinitely reasonable, exquisitely mannered lad!.
This interview has forced me to consider my representative’s character, ethics, scruples, and honesty in an entirely different light. Heavens to Betsy, is he ever misunderstood by a veritable plague of shallow thinking. How difficult it must be for a man of such ethereal sensitivity and discriminatory powers, having to elucidate the vast networks of legal expertise zinging lawyerly flairs around in his brain at the speed of light. How could anyone imagine that this saintly public servant, toiling away for the good of us all, might have ulterior motives?
What a stinking pile of crap.
Having far more intimate knowledge of just what plaintiffs can already get up to filing false defamation claims than I would have wanted, I’m here to tell those of you who haven’t been frivolously sued for defamation not to believe any disingenuous bullpucky about your free speech being ripped away from you, as we speak–freely, for the moment.
Apparently our honorable esquire is completely oblivious to the lack of case law on the Florida SLAPP statute, which has primarily been successfully applied in suits against HOAs. When I was in the process of having an elected official–and (limited? it’s debatable) public figure–sue me in an attempt to shut me up from speaking what people can now darn well see was the truth, we were knowingly out on a limb with the SLAPP statute, because the judges really had nothing previous to go by.
Thankfully Judge Dannheisser stepped in to put an end to that mess–which I won not just because I had truth on my side, but also because we could match her dollar for dollar–and in his ruling provided a cogent explanation of how we we might have applied SLAPP better. Perhaps that would provide a road map to anyone being sued by a public official in the future–although you’d better hope the case hasn’t been successfully shopped to the wrong judge.
The really mind-blowing thing about the result of the suit against me is that people familiar with our judicial system were unanimous in their surprise at how winning an outcome JJ Talbott got from it–in that, nobody expected me to get anything back at all, and were thus gobsmacked that I was awarded fees, costs, and the bond on the ridiculous sua sponte injunction placed on me (demanding me to remove posts from social media that I hadn’t made, and had no way of removing).
What didn’t we get? Fees and sanctions. News flash: it is nearly impossible to get these in a defamation suit, because you have to prove that the accusations were so unfounded that no lawyer in his or her right mind would believe it and bring it to the Court. In other words, good luck with that. Not speaking to Judge Dannheisser in particular, judges really don’t like sanctioning officers of the court, which is why it happens so seldom. 57.105, Alex? Really? I hope that you advise your clients better than you are misinforming the public, as no respectable and honest attorney would ever advise a client they are going to get fees back on a defamation case. We asked for sanctions, multiple times across two different attorneys. JJ told me that we’d be hard pressed to get *anything* back, and because he *is* honest, told me that any money spent pursuing it would most likely go out the window.
I pursued it nonetheless, because I thought it might spare somebody else from false defamation claims if I fought a frivolous filing as hard as we possibly could. Being blessed with an inspired attorney who actually gives a damn about free speech, we at least got about 17k back. What didn’t we get back? About a quarter mil. And before anybody thinks that was JJ’s fault, the plaintiff was the one who rolled those costs up; at last public record, when the case was nowhere near over, her attorney was into her for about 170k, if memory serves.
The only thing that he said that made any sense at all in the midst of the rest of the drivel was the option of having an evidentiary hearing from the get-go. Because what typically happens, as happened with mine? The plaintiff *also* files for a bunch of TROs that stick you in litigation long after the cows have come home, and in effect you’re trying the case before you even get to trying the case. When Edler–finally–lost all 4 of the TROs she filed on me, she promptly dropped the case…just as we were heading into depositions, and having issued our first round of subpoenas.
Lord knows what all “unintended consequences” of whatever rabbits he ends up pulling out of his hat will raise their ugly heads, but we sure know what some of the intended consequences are: making critics or our governor and legislature register with the state, and disclose any money they made from the commentary or reporting–if memory serves, on a monthly basis? We also know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the blade will cut both ways, which is why so many have been hoping that somebody in the GOP brain trust up in Tallahassee we still have honest judges on the bench. It’s also a pretty fair prediction that this legislation will set off an absolute firestorm of suits on both sides of the aisle, at a time our courts hardly need any more clogging after our legislature blew away consumer protections this session, causing a monster logjam in the runup to it.
The justification of his assault on anonymous sources is appalling, and terrifying: “Actual malice should be presumed” [in the cases of a single anonymous source]. And “The onus shouldn’t be on the plaintiff in that circumstance.” Gee, and I guess it will only be people who announce right in their coverage or commentary that they have relied on a single anonymous source who get hauled to court; never would it ever happen that journalists will be sued left and right just to determine how many sources they used in the quest for that golden ring of actual malice. No better spotlight could be shined on the grave danger this sort of sophistry is putting our democracy than those words.
Will the legislation allow retroactive suits employing the new law? What will the statute of limitations be?
Is our representative making a list?
Am I on it?
Are you?