{"id":39925,"date":"2014-02-20T11:40:34","date_gmt":"2014-02-20T16:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=39925"},"modified":"2014-02-20T11:58:21","modified_gmt":"2014-02-20T16:58:21","slug":"ninth-circuit-bloggers-are-americans-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=39925","title":{"rendered":"Ninth Circuit; Bloggers are Americans, too"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since TSO is somewhere over the North Atlantic headed for another grueling embed, it’s up to me to write your boring-ass legal post for the week. A friend sent us a link to the USAToday<\/a> which proclaims that the Ninth Circuit determined that bloggers and other Americans have First Amendment protections when they’re being sued for defamation;<\/p>\n

Crystal L. Cox, a blogger from Eureka, Mont., now living in Port Townshend, Wash., was sued for defamation by Bend attorney Kevin Padrick and his company, Obsidian Finance Group LLC, after she made posts on several websites she created accusing them of fraud, corruption, money-laundering and other illegal activities. The appeals court noted Padrick and Obsidian were hired by Summit Accommodators to advise them before filing for bankruptcy, and that the U.S. Bankruptcy Court later appointed Padrick trustee in the Chapter 11 case. The court added that Summit had defrauded investors in its real estate operations through a Ponzi scheme.<\/p>\n

A jury in 2011 had awarded Padrick and Obsidian $2.5 million.<\/p>\n

“Because Cox’s blog post addressed a matter of public concern, even assuming that Gertz is limited to such speech, the district court should have instructed the jury that it could not find Cox liable for defamation unless it found that she acted negligently,” judge Andrew D. Hurwitz wrote. “We hold that liability for a defamatory blog post involving a matter of public concern cannot be imposed without proof of fault and actual damages.”<\/p>\n

The appeals court upheld rulings by the District Court that other posts by Cox were constitutionally protected opinion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to the legal expert quoted in the article, the decision means that all Americans are entitled to their opinion and are protected by the First Amendment when they express that opinion publicly – that it’s not a right exclusive to the press.<\/p>\n

But, then, I’m not a lawyer. I had two semesters of ConLaw twenty years ago and that concluded my legal studies. All I know is that I can’t have a 40-acre wheat field that the government doesn’t know about. <\/p>\n

ADDED:<\/strong> For those of you lawyers out there who are interested in Blog Law, it seems that Ace<\/a> is facing off with Brett Kimberlin. Kimberlin is trying to sue to learn Ace’s real name and actual address. Of course, Kimberlin has a poor record against bloggers, so it should be interesting to watch. Ace has the most unlikely legal team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since TSO is somewhere over the North Atlantic headed for another grueling embed, it’s up to … Ninth Circuit; Bloggers are Americans, too<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39925\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}