Media companies love anti-SLAPP laws because they allow them to run "fake news" day after day without the slightest worry of being held accountable for their perfidy. Even liberal former labor secretary Robert Reich has fallen for anti-SLAPP propaganda, which holds that such laws help poor individuals defend themselves against frivolous lawsuits filed by deep-pocketed corporations when, in fact, the opposite is more often true.
A California court recently ruled in favor of an anti-SLAPP motion filed against fitness icon Richard Simmons by the National Enquirer. Simmons had sued the tabloid after it falsely published a BS cover story (which it described as "shocking!") claiming Simmons had undergone a sex change to become a woman. He had not. Simmons said he "has a legal right to insist that he not be portrayed as someone he is not" and "to be portrayed in a manner that is truthful." Few reasonable people would disagree.
Simmons got screwed.
Check out the Orwellian Enquirer argument the judge bought hook, line and sinker: "Plaintiff has no right to suppress speech about him, even false speech, if it is not harmful to his reputation." The judge ordered Simmons -- the victim -- to pay $130,000 to the Enquirer, which admits it lied about him. "Falsity is not enough" to prove defamation, said Enquirer attorney Kelli Sager.
The anti-SLAPP business has become shameless. Sager even defended the Daily Mail after it ran a fake-news story connecting First Lady Melania Trump to an escort agency.
The Los Angeles Times recently made a similar anything-goes argument in favor of its anti-SLAPP motion against me. In 2015, when the #1 shareholder of the Times' parent company was the LAPD pension fund, the then-LAPD chief ordered the then-publisher, his political ally, to fire me and run a fake-news story describing me me as a liar and fabulist. After I proved it was the Times and not me who lied, Kelli Sager -- the National Enquirer lawyer who also represents the upscale Los Angeles Times -- told the court: "This is not a case about the quote-unquote truth."
After I sued for defamation, the trial judge -- in the same courthouse as the Simmons case -- ruled that I -- the victim -- must pay the Times $330,000 in their legal fees even though I had shown they were liars and that they knew what they printed about me was untrue at the time. Like Simmons, we are appealing.
The Enquirer recently hit the Playboy model in the Trump case, Karen McDougal, with an anti-SLAPP motion that would force her to pay its legal fees.
For my money, the most outrageous California example of abuse I've read recently is former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen's anti-SLAPP motion against Stormy Daniels. Cohen said Daniels lied about having an affair with Trump -- which is plainly false.
Cohen has been sentenced to three years in prison for arranging hush-money payoffs to Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels. Too bad he won't be bunking with the publishers of the National Enquirer and The Los Angeles Times.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
2
1
