Mother Jones “wins” defamation suit, pays $2.5 million to get there

Updated here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2015 at 8:39 pm and is filed under misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to Mother Jones “wins” defamation suit, pays $2.5 million to get there

  1. tsaoutofourpants says:
    October 8, 2015 at 8:48 pm

    It cost their insurance company most or all of that, no doubt, but point well taken that every state needs an anti-SLAPP law.

  2. Scott says:
    October 8, 2015 at 9:52 pm

    To be a truly effective and fair deterrent, Anti-SLAPP laws need to include compensation for the victims of SLAPP suits, not just their attorneys! And the compensation needs to be significant. Right?

    • marcorandazza says:
      October 10, 2015 at 5:21 pm

      At the very least, a SLAPP finding should make the defendant whole. I think tacking on punitive damages, like we do in Nevada is a good idea. That way, a billionaire can’t just say “Fuck it, how much could they spend defending themselves?”

      • bizstarz says:
        October 14, 2015 at 7:50 pm

        Great points. I definitely agree that “At the very least, a SLAPP finding should make the defendant whole.” But since SLAPP suits are often filed by billionaires and large corporations, I think punitive damages should be based on the size of the SLAPP suit filer instead of the defendant. Or make the penalty at least $1,000,000. Also make attys who file SLAPP suits subject to significant penalties and sanctions. These sorts of changes are not only fair and appropriate, they could virtually eliminate SLAPP suits.

  3. senpai71 says:
    October 9, 2015 at 12:26 pm

    I guess the Further Discussion section in the decision (https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2451499/vanderslootdecision.pdf) is in SOME ways good for Mother Jones (since it makes it VERY clear that the judge was only finding for them based on the law, so there’s no chance that VanDerSloot could question whether the judge has any bias). However, it’s incredibly damning against them also – it basically says that Mother Jones is mud-slinging, demonizing, slanted and unfair. Not sure if the eventual outcome is good or bad for MJ, frankly.