The Westboro Baptist Church wins in the Supreme Court in the case about protesting at a soldier's funeral.

"The First Amendment shields Westboro from tort liability for its picketing in this case."

Chief Justice Roberts writes the opinion, with only Justice Alito dissenting. Justice Breyer has a concurring opinion. From the Roberts opinion:

The picketing was conducted under police supervision some 1,000 feet from the church, out of the sight of those at the church. The protest was not unruly; there was no shouting, profanity, or violence....

Given that Westboro’s speech was at a public place on a matter of public concern, that speech is entitled to “special protection” under the First Amendment. Such speech cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt. “If there is a bedrock principle underly- ing the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” Texas v. Johnson, 491 U. S. 397, 414 (1989). Indeed, “the point of all speech protection . . . is to shield just those choices of content that in someone’s eyes are misguided, or even hurtful.” Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U. S. 557, 574 (1995)....

Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here— inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate. That choice requires that we shield West- boro from tort liability for its picketing in this case.

Clearly, this is the right outcome.

AND: Alito, the lone dissenter, stresses the value of the tort called "intentional infliction of emotional distress":

Respondents’ outrageous conduct caused petitioner great injury, and the Court now compounds that injury by depriving petitioner of a judgment that acknowledges the wrong he suffered.

In order to have a society in which public issues can be openly and vigorously debated, it is not necessary to allow the brutalization of innocent victims like petitioner.

Breyer's short concurrence makes the point that the decision is limited to in-person picketing about matters of "public concern." In adding that the Court "does not examine in depth the effect of television broadcasting" and "internet postings," I get the sense that he's looking ahead to cases about bullying. 

Photography in the delivery room — parents feel like they have a right...

... and the doctors and hospital staff don't like doing their work on camera.

Many hospitals allow and even encourage recording because modern cameras, particularly those taking video, are so unobtrusive. But that same technology has introduced a wild card into a fraught scene that could shock a jury — with the mother screaming and staff responding (or not) to what may look like an emergency — all of which can be edited to misrepresent what actually took place....

“When we had people videotaping, it got to be a bit of a media circus,” Dr. Tracy said, adding that the banning of cameras evolved through general practice rather than a written policy. “I want to be 100 percent focused on the medical care, and in this litigious atmosphere, where ads are on TV every 30 seconds about suing, it makes physicians gun shy.”...

Dr. Elliott Main, chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, which also allows filming of births, said, “The modern approach is not to ban cameras but to do drills and practice.”

“Where you get into trouble is where people panic or don’t know what to do next and have blank looks on their faces,” he said. Videotaping simulated births, he said, can help the medical staff adjust their behavior.

Now, part of medical training is: Acting!

Look like you're doing the right thing, even when you're confused and you know you're hurting someone. That would be a good approach even without the cameras, but medical personnel — like politicians — need to adjust their demeanor and expression for the world of YouTube.

"Last week, all humanity thrilled to the footage caught on a mall security camera of a walking-and-texting woman falling into a fountain."

"This week, the once-anonymous woman is doing an airing-of-grievances media blitz, complete with threats of legal action against those who made her hilarious klutziness an internet sensation."

Is there a cause of action for the invasion of privacy that takes place these days when someone catches something stupid that you do — in public — and puts it on YouTube? Hey, don't be stupid! The consequences are much higher today with the internet and viral video. It's a big deterrent. If the legal system turns that deterrent into a monetary gain, it will be incentivizing stupidity.

We need to learn how to live in the world as it is. When we're in public, we have a new dimension of visibility because of digital cameras and the internet. I've been thinking about the effect this is having on politics. Politicians have to watch every single thing they say. That's difficult.

Remember how one word uttered by George Allen destroyed him, because he foolishly thought he was speaking only to a small group and did not foresee how it would play on YouTube. Politicians will have to speak clearly, with a consistent message, and not something tailored to the particular group that they are speaking to at the moment. Obama was able to overcome his "bitter clingers" remark, which was specially designed to reach the hearts of wealthy San Franciscans. But it wasn't easy, and it still dogs him.

Heads up, everybody. Don't stare at the one thing that's right in front of your nose — whether it's your Blackberry or your biggest, wealthiest fans. Pay attention. There's a low wall just ahead, you're about to tumble into the fountain, and the internet is waiting to make you the next sensation.

A woman gets $5.8 million in damages from the woman who stole her husband.

It's the tort called "alienation of affection" — and it worked in North Carolina.

"If you want to have an affair, you need to choose someone who doesn’t reside in North Carolina to have it with because you are going, you’re gonna’ open yourself up to a liability if you do so."

Apparently, to North Carolinians, the words "Do you fully support the Obama agenda?" are fighting words.

What is wrong with that man tortfeasor?



How can Congressman Bob Etheridge (D-NC2) think he can lay hands on someone for asking a question like that? Why did that question make him so angry? Look how much he believes in his own capacity and right to intimidate! Quite aside from the manhandling, where does Etheridge get the idea that someone who asks a question is required to divulge his name? Is he completely deranged? Does he not remember what a camera is? Has he never heard of YouTube? I bet he has now.

ADDED: Here's how WaPo's Dave Weigel minimizes the story:

But without any name or organizational support, just by riling up a member of Congress, the students have created the first conservative meme of the week. They seem to have learned from organizations such as ThinkProgress that any video of a member acting strangely, no matter how grainy, is grist for the Web.

And Weigel is aptly embarrassed by the first comment:

You refer to this dismissively as "video of a member acting strangely." Sorry, this isn't so easily dismissed. It's video of a member acting thuggishly, committing an assault and battery. And it's video of a member who has the arrogance to claim he has a right to know the identity of someone who asked me a question on the street. He doesn't have any such right. What he has is the dangerous notion that he's exempt from the laws of the District of Columbia and from the dictates of a civil society. And by your so cavalierly dismissing his outrageous behavior, you're complicit.

Posted by: Rob_ | June 14, 2010 10:52 AM...

Of course, the big question now — for anyone with a Weigel-y mentality — is: Who's Rob_?

MORE: This came in the email:

I'm Rob_ 

I know your question at the end of the Etheridge post was facetious, but I figured I'd answer it anyway. I'm Robert Cantor, a retired lawyer and amateur photographer in Rockville, Maryland, unaffiliated with Andrew Breitbart or any other political or journalistic operation but fascinated both by Etheridge's outrageous behavior and the way it was covered in the media. Not only did Weigel mischaracterize it and treat it dismissively, but others like CBS chose to edit down the battery to eliminate Etheridge's very rough grabbing of the young man's neck as well as the repeated requests from the young man that Etheridge let him go. The New York Times, following the pattern of its coverage of Van Jones and Helen Thomas, waited to report anything about the incident until Etheridge had apologized, then made his apology the story and reported little about the incident itself. Thank goodness for Glenn Greenwald, who had the integrity to call for Etheridge to be arrested and the courage to call out the commenters to his post who defended Etheridge.

(Rob gave me permission to copy this.)

The model insisted on outing the blogger who called her a "skank."

And look, it's a woman — a young woman — a pretty young woman.

Speaking out for the first time since a court order forced Google to reveal her identity, blogger Rosemary Port tells the Daily News that model Liskula Cohen should blame herself for the uproar.

"This has become a public spectacle and a circus that is not my doing," said Port, whose "Skanks in NYC" site branded the 37-year-old Cohen an "old hag."

"By going to the press, she defamed herself," Port said.

"Before her suit, there were probably two hits on my Web site: One from me looking at it, and one from her looking at it," Port said. "That was before it became a spectacle. I feel my right to privacy has been violated."

But before you celebrate Port's seemingly wise anti-litigation statement, take note that she's suing Google... for $15 million federal lawsuit against the Web giant.

"When I was being defended by attorneys for Google, I thought my right to privacy was being protected," Port said.

"But that right fell through the cracks. Without any warning, I was put on a silver platter for the press to attack me. I would think that a multi-billion dollar conglomerate would protect the rights of all its users."

In her suit, she'll charge Google "breached its fiduciary duty to protect her expectation of anonymity," said her high-powered attorney Salvatore Strazzullo.

"I'm ready to take this all the way to the Supreme Court," Strazzullo said. "Our Founding Fathers wrote 'The Federalist Papers' under pseudonyms. Inherent in the First Amendment is the right to speak anonymously. Shouldn't that right extend to the new public square of the Internet?"

How hard did Google fight? Surely, there's no absolute right to hide your identity. Why should someone who commits the tort of defamation escape a lawsuit by hiding behind a pseudonym? It's not fair to the people who have the guts to show their names when they libel people. They get stuck being defendants in defamation suits.

The key is for courts to have a high standard in determining whether there really is defamation before they order that the name be revealed. Otherwise, someone who has not actually suffered a legally remediable injury can use a lawsuit for the wrong purpose: to inflict the injury of making a pseudonymous writer's name public.

Note that Liskula Cohen is now dropping her defamation suit against Port. That's good for Port. It's bad to be sued for $3 million. But it suggests that the disclosure of the name was the point of the lawsuit. Courts should not allow themselves to be used for that purpose. And Google's lawyers should fight hard to make courts see it that way.

Look out! Sarah's got a new Facebook entry about health care.

This time, she wants the thing Obama won't talk about: malpractice law reform.

"Just because 'actual malice' is a tough standard to meet doesn’t mean you aren’t in big trouble if someone meets it."

When the threat of a defamation suit really should scare a blogger.

When robots attack.

Good luck suing in Sweden.

In 2007, a muscular robot programmed to lift heavy stones malfunctioned in a factory near Stockholm, Sweden, and some poor devil—who thought he'd turned off the power—nearly got himself killed when the robot grabbed his head and shook him around. He ended up with four broken ribs, but managed to "defend himself" and live. The judge awarded the guy 25,000 Swedish kronor, which sounds nice except that it's only about $3,000. The judge also reprimanded the guy for being at least partially at fault, if I'm reading the Swedish translation correctly.

Get robot insurance:

About that AutoAdmit litigation.

The latest.

... Anthony Ciolli, a University of Pennsylvania Law School graduate and former chief education director at AutoAdmit, can press ahead with his lawsuit against Stanford Law School professor Mark Lemley, who worked as counsel at San Francisco-based Keker & Van Nest, two Yale Law School students and others.

Ciolli's lawsuit claims that he was wrongly included as a defendant in a case brought in June 2007 by the two law students, who alleged that AutoAdmit defamed them on its discussion board. He also claims that Boston-based Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge rescinded its offer of full-time employment because of the alleged connection between him and the statements about the women.....

Named as defendants in his suit are Heide Iravani and Brittan Heller, the former Yale law students; and ReputationDefender, a public relations firm that represented the students. Also named are Lemley; Keker & Van Nest; the Los Angeles-based law firm Rosen & Associates; and attorney David Rosen. Lemley and Rosen were attorneys for the students.

Ciolli's lawsuit alleges wrongful initiation of civil proceedings, abuse of process, libel, slander, false-light invasion of privacy, tortious interference with contract and unauthorized use of name or likeness.

A huge reason not to sue someone: He'll sue you back. How awful!

"An act of adultery between the defendant and the spouse of the plaintiff..."

"... when the defendant knew or should have known that the plaintiff’s spouse was married shall constitute proof of intentional interference with the plaintiff’s marriage. Damages awarded pursuant to this statute shall not exceed $500,000. This action shall be instituted within two years of the discovery of the adultery."

Maggie Gallagher is inspired by this proposed statute (from Minnesota, oddly enough). But what she really wants is not that you should be able to extract half a million dollars from the person who seduced your husband/wife. She wants a cause of action against websites that facilitate adultery.

Christine and Aaron Boring sued Google for privacy violation, negligence, trespassing and unjust enrichment for showing their house in Street View.

Judge Amy Reynolds Hay threw the case out:

While it is easy to imagine that many whose property appears on Google's virtual maps resent the privacy implications, it is hard to believe that any - other than the most exquisitely sensitive - would suffer shame or humiliation....

The plaintiffs' failure to take readily available steps to protect their own privacy and mitigate their alleged pain suggests to the Court that the intrusion and that their suffering were less severe than they contend

Good call. They were sensitive. And they were Boring.

Suing your own abortionist for making you witness the murder of your accidentally delivered child.

How can the mother who sought the death of her unborn child recover damages for seeing the death acted out in front of her?

"The baby writhed and gasped for air, still connected to [Sycloria] Williams by the umbilical cord. Immobilized by shock, Williams watched [abortion clinic owner Belkis] Gonzalez run into the room, cut the umbilical cord with a pair of orange-handled shears, stuff the baby and afterbirth into a red biohazard bag and throw the bag into a garbage can," the lawsuit explains.

Shouldn't anyone having an abortion need to visualize what is being done to the life/potential life she is destroying? To claim damages from seeing the death is to admit that you didn't understand what you were doing when you sought the abortion. If women are to have a right to choose to have an abortion — if the decision to have an abortion properly rests with the woman, as the law says it does — then it is crucial that she understand what she is doing. This lawsuit is a claim that she did not comprehend what she was doing. If that is true, it undermines the whole basis for the right to choose to have an abortion. Choices imply competent understanding. Either women know what they are doing or they do not. Take a side.