In court filing, Trump leans on legal protections he’s vowed to undo
The donny boy sure loves to sue!
In court filing, Trump leans on legal protections he’s vowed to undo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2016/06/27/in-court-filing-trump-leans-on-legal-protections-hes-vowed-to-undo/?postshare=8371467116321840&tid=ss_tw
By Erik Wemple June 27 at 6:50 PM
It’s a good thing that Donald Trump’s plan to loosen existing legal protections for those who badmouth public figures hasn’t yet taken effect. Because the presumptive Republican presidential nominee took advantage of those protections today in a legal filing in a defamation suit filed against Trump and his former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, by a cable news pundit. (Trump’s presidential campaign is also listed as a defendant).
In a just-filed motion for dismissal of the suit, attorney Lawrence S. Rosen argues that the plaintiff in the case, cable news commentator and Republican strategist Cheri Jacobus, is a just such a public figure. “Because the alleged statements cannot be objectively characterized as true or false, plaintiff also cannot meet the added pleading requirement of ‘actual malice’ required for ‘public figures’ in defamation claims,” Rosen wrote in a footnote in the filing. “By plaintiff’s own complaint allegations, there can be no dispute here that she too is a ‘public figure or, at the very least, a ‘limited public figure,’ as she has clearly “thrust [herself] to the forefront of [a] particular public controvers[y] in order to influence the resolution of the issues involved.”
Advancing the case that Jacobus is a public figure amounts to smart lawyering from the Trump side. After all, years of precedent have established the principle that defaming a public figure is an exceedingly difficult thing to do: The remarks in question must be made either with knowledge of their falsity or with reckless disregard for the truth. That high bar has assisted news outlets over the years as they have reported on the shortcomings and scandals of boldface names, like Donald Trump.
The resulting difficulty of suing the pants off broadcasters and newspapers has quite clearly frustrated Trump, as he explained in a February appearance in Fort Worth:
One of the things I’m going to do, and this is going to make it tougher for me … but one of the things I’m going to do if I win … is I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We’re going to open up those libel laws. So that when the New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or when the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.
Again: It’s precisely those laws that Trump himself is relying upon to beat back the suit from Jacobus...............................