Libel

The SPEECH Act saved author Udis Sanchez Lord from paying over $50,000 after losing a defamation lawsuit in Canada.

A Missouri resident, Lord published “From Fieldhand to Ph.D., Ms. Asia International,” an autobiography in which she described a family dispute over an inheritance. Her cousin, Leodegaria Sanchez Pontigon of Canada, thought the text defamed her. So, she sued Lord in Canada, where libel laws do not afford authors the same First Amendment protections as in the United States, and won.

When John Hoff mans his post on Guard Tower 6 at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan, he often wonders what went wrong.

It’s not a terrorist, a vehicle-born improvised explosive device, or an operation gone bad that fills his mind.

It’s a Minnesota court battle over his blog.

“Every day I have to wonder how I find myself in this position for blogging what even the court agreed was the God’s honest truth,” Hoff said in an email.

Although defamation cases based on Twitter posts are generally subject to the same standards, at least one court has ruled that the “freewheeling, anything-goes” nature of the Internet may provide a defense.

In a case stemming from a widely distributed, anonymous email message, the New York intermediate appellate court held that alleged defamatory comments published in cyberspace often lack the level of credibility readers would give similar remarks in other contexts.

AP

In the summer of 2008, a West Virginia woman called a local television station to report that her four-year-old son had been sexually abused at a local daycare center.

The state Department of Health and Human Resources had recently investigated the daycare center based on her allegations, and its report concluded that the “possibility that an incident of [child neglect] could occur is likely.”