Judge Partially Reverses His Previous Dismissal of Nick Sandmann Defamation Suit Against Washington Post;
$250 Million Suit Will Procede

Sandmann will be permitted to move to discovery in order to prove the Washington Post acted like an Austere Religious Scholar towards him.

Pro-life teen Nick Sandmann's defamation suit against the Washington Post got a new lease on life Monday thanks to US District Judge William Bertelsman partially reversing his prior ruling, which will allow the suit to move forward.

I can't find the actual ruling yet.

I wrote about this previously, noting the "judge" (perhaps an Austere Religious Scholar himself) was completely ignorant of defamation law and incorrectly classified true-or-false statements as mere "opinion."

Claims which reduce your reputation which are of a true-or-false factual nature are not opinion. But clearly this member of the Best and Brightest couldn't be bothered to look up the black-letter meaning of defamation.

While it may or may not be true that some/most claims that someone is "disrespectful" or even "racist" are opinion and hence cannot be the basis of a defamation suit, other claims made by the Washington Post -- such as the claim that Sandmann walked up to block the lying Indian and stop him from moving -- are true-or-false factual assertions which are, obviously, false, and therefore defamatory.

Sandmann's lawyer stated that this bodes well for the suits against NBC and CNN et al.

33 Ace, it's only 3 of the original 33 claims that the Carter-appointed Sr Judge permitted to be reinstated in the Sandmann case. Posted by: Ever at October 28, 2019 07:44 PM (ZZDMQ)

Left Coast Dog notes that you only need to win on one. All of these various charges are really just variations of, or particularizations of, the same basic complaint, that the Washington Post claimed untrue things in order to harm the reputation of Nicholas Sandmann.

If you buy 10 tickets for a lottery, you're not hoping that several of them win. You just really need the one.

thanks to andycanuck.

Open thread.

posted by Ace of Spades at 08:01 PM

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