Silly update: Hinderaker has removed the front page treatment for his item below.
I think he realized… his is an idiotic take on the law. You can still see it at the link, but if you don’t know its specific URL you can’t find it. Charming. End update.
John is even dumber than he looks.
Sure, the Second Circuit gave the odious Sarah Palin the green light to obtain a new trial this afternoon. But when she loses again, and she will lose again, she will owe additional legal defense fees to the New York Times. [The Times corrected the errors promptly and apologized.]
She already owes well over $40,000 in those fees (and will have to pay her own lawyers to retry the case), and may end up with well over $150,000 needing to be paid for the defense lawyers of the New York Times.
Let us also stipulate that she is without a doubt, a public figure in this trial.
Finally, the district court judge will be allowed to take judicial notice of the fact that all of the complained of statements appeared on the editorial page. They were couched as opinions — exclusively. She may feel the opinions were unfair, but they were the opinions of the editor. The matters address responsibility for shootings, and her hateful graphics that may have led to a sense of “permission”. Here’s the bit, about the mass shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords:
“I think this [was] an example of very unfortunate editorializing on the part of the Times,” Rakoff said in court. “The law here sets a very high standard [for actual malice]. The court finds that that standard has not been met…”
A claim of a link — or permission — is a matter of opinion. That opinion is protected under the First Amendment, as a matter of political import — and public concern — under an uninterrupted line of cases stretching back 150 years — at the United States Supreme Court.
So in sum, despite what Hinderaker says, I highly doubt she will retry the case. She will simply owe double what she owes now if she does so.
But no one ever accused her of being the sharpest tool in the shed. So we shall see.
[John wants to conflate Palin’s — with his pet case, where a climate change denialist accused a climate scientist of being a pedophile.
That was a purportedly factual statement, — though it was utterly false, and was uttered about someone, in their private life. And so the climate change denialist lost, in DC. He committed libel.]
Charming.
