Libel lawsuit filed against Wikipedia Editors

[paulsby]

filed by Democratic County Commissioner

excerpt follows:
Longtime Ingham County Commissioner and Michigan political consultant Mark Grebner has filed a defamation lawsuit in Ingham County Circuit Court against three men for allegedly editing false and defamatory information into his biographical entry on Wikipedia.

The three defendants are Dennis Lennox, a Central Michigan University student who received a great deal of attention over the last few years for a string of politically-charged incidents on that campus and was elected Cheboygan County drain commissioner last year; Bradley Dennis, a member of the Michigan State University College Republicans who ran an unsuccessful campaign against Grebner for the Ingham County Commission last fall; and MSU sophomore Anthony Giammarinaro.

The three are accused of editing Grebner’s Wikipedia entry to include information that Grebner, a Democrat, argues is false and libelous....

The lawsuit is not against Wikipedia itself, so there isn't any 47 U.S.C. § 230 problem. In many ways, it's a traditional libel lawsuit against the alleged authors of the libel. Still, it seems to be one of the first lawsuits filed against people who have written or edited Wikipedia entries, so I thought I'd note it. Many thanks to Jason Miller for the pointer

http://www.volokh.com/

[provis99]

1. thanks for the info

I hope those libelous republican clods pay damages through the nose.

[paulsby]

2. while he is a public official,

and thus the standard for libel is rather high, i think the comments about him being a "convicted child molester" are pretty clearly libelous.

that's clearly a factual, not an opinion, issue. one either IS or isn't.

he'll need to prove "actual malice" which essentially means either 1) they knew it was false or 2) they showed a reckless disregard for the truth (iow, they were reckless in not knowing it was false, confirming it, etc.)

[abumbyanyothername]

3. I would think that reckless disregard is going to be

a little easier to establish here. Convicted child molester certainly implies some source for the charge. At least one of these three will roll on the others.

[paulsby]

4. right

if they could show, for example, that they "learned" of his conviction from another source, and cite that source, that would probably be enough for them to get off. if they say "some d00d told me", i would think not. i don't "do" civil law much, though, and am admittedly not that schooled on libel cases.