{"id":73959,"date":"2017-08-13T08:30:40","date_gmt":"2017-08-13T12:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=73959"},"modified":"2017-08-13T07:46:42","modified_gmt":"2017-08-13T11:46:42","slug":"army-colonel-awarded-8-4-million-for-defamation-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=73959","title":{"rendered":"Army colonel awarded $8.4 million for blog defamation case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/true-crime\/wp\/2017\/08\/11\/jury-orders-blogger-to-pay-8-4-million-to-ex-army-colonel-she-accused-of-rape\/?utm_term=.b79475e18efd\">Washington Post<\/a> writes about Colonel David \u201cWil\u201d Riggins who was being considered for his first star in 2013 when  Susan Shannon of Everett, Washington accused him of raping her when they were both West Point cadets in 1986 in her blog, <a href=\"https:\/\/shortlittlerebel.com\/about-the-author\/\">Short Little Rebel<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Post, the Army&#8217;s Criminal Investigation Division (CID) investigated the case and could find no evidence to support either party. Shannon had resigned from the military academy soon after she contends that the rape took place, but at the time &#8220;she denied any sexual assault to West Point officials&#8221;. however, a jury decided that it should cost her for posting about the rape on her blog;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Riggins sued Shannon for defamation, claiming that every aspect of her rape claim on the West Point campus was \u201cprovably false,\u201d and that she wrote two blog posts and a Facebook post \u201cto intentionally derail [his] promotion\u201d to brigadier general. During a six-day trial that ended Aug. 1, a jury in Fairfax County, Va., heard from both Riggins and Shannon at length. And after 2\u00bd hours of deliberation, they sided emphatically with Riggins, awarding him $8.4 million in damages, an extraordinary amount for a defamation case between two private citizens. The jury ordered Shannon to pay $3.4 million in compensatory damages for injury to his reputation and lost wages, and $5 million in punitive damages, \u201cto make sure nothing like this will ever happen again,\u201d according to one of the jurors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Colonel Riggins is now retired from the Army after a stellar career, except for the rape allegation and he&#8217;s currently a pilot for the FAA. The Army wouldn&#8217;t let his nomination for Brigadier General go forward because of the environment in 2013;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Riggins\u2019s nomination for brigadier general was returned to McHugh, the secretary of the Army, who wrote that \u201cI do not have faith and confidence in Colonel Riggins\u2019 judgment and character. Consequently, I do not support his promotion to brigadier general.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, Shannon is paying the price.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Washington Post writes about Colonel David \u201cWil\u201d Riggins who was being considered for his first &hellip; <a title=\"Army colonel awarded $8.4 million for blog defamation case\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=73959\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Army colonel awarded $8.4 million for blog defamation case<\/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":[198],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-army"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73959","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=73959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}