GOODY TWO SHOES: SLAPP Happy
James Taranto’s lead item in “Best of the Web Today” (BOTWT) this past Thursday concerned blogger Kathleen Seidel, who is critical of tort lawyers trying to make a buck off the speculative theory that thimerosal (a mercury-containing preservative once used in childhood vaccines) causes autism, and her efforts to quash a subpoena by one of those lawyers, Clifford Shoemaker:
Seidel's response raises some tricky legal questions - for instance, whether independent bloggers have the same legal privileges as journalists (privileges that, at least in federal court, rest on fairly shaky ground to begin with).
Assuming that Seidel's representations are accurate, this is a classic Slapp, an acronym for "strategic lawsuit against public participation." Such legal actions may become more common as citizens increasingly participate in public debates by way of blogs and other Web media.
From reading Seidel's brief, it is clear that she is either savvy or well-advised about the law. But many bloggers probably aren't, and would be intimidated into silence by such an effort. It might behoove the ACLU, or some organization devoted to civil liberties, to devote some resources to figuring out how to defend speech that is inconvenient to plaintiffs lawyers. [Emphasis, The Stiletto.]
This would be the same James Taranto who sicced the general counsel of a Fortune 500 company on The Stiletto to silence her inconvenient speech protesting his repeatedly publishing and promoting crappy commentaries by his girlfriend Heather Robinson - a talentless nonentity who finds it necessary to inflate her meager credentials - on BOTWT and OpinionJournal.com without a conflict of interest disclosure to readers.
How ironic that Taranto, who relies on the First Amendment to earn his living, would clearly stop at nothing to quash The Stiletto’s free speech rights. And how hypocritical that Taranto reproves a tort lawyer for trying to do the exact same thing to another blogger.
By the way, Taranto, NY has an anti-SLAPP statute. Oh and thanks for the tip about the ACLU.
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