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BJW's avatar

Another great job of explaining, Ken and Josh. And as an old person, I find myself wondering if I should study law because this stuff is riveting. (I could go to college and get another degree free in Ohio at my age!) But anyway, Ken, I had to make a comment about the legal term "gigantic bag of dicks." THIS IS, of course, why Josh and Sara producing this podcast is so necessary. Probably couldn't use that term on your previous podcast on KCRW. And this legal term is so, so necessary in the age of Trump. Thanks you all.

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Laurence Yarosh's avatar

They should do a show on all the legal terms that appear in court nowadays: fishing expedition, red herring, scorched-earth litigation and beating a dead horse.

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Doug's avatar

OMG CivPro deep dive. What’s next? Equitable tolling? Be still my beating heart. 😂

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Sniffnoy's avatar

Sorry, garden of electric what?

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BJW's avatar

Yeah. I listened to that 3 times and still didn't get it.

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Ken White's avatar

Devices.

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Doug's avatar

Best I could do. Bosch, eat your heart out. https://labs.openai.com/s/NLSQ7vAXmTftB5ongPFLF8j2

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Dan Sandler's avatar

So thinking about a Fox jury trial - we have to assume at least one person in the jury will be a regular Fox viewer.

So assuming that, a possible Q for a future show:

Fox has to assume that the jury will ignore the judge instructions to not pay attention to any media during the trial and still watch the evening Fox programming. Possibly because they are a fan. Possibly out of curiosity to see what they are saying. Maybe because their spouse is watching and they have no choice.

So what would happen if Fox has folks like Tucker just outright lie on air about the trial and try to influence that juror? Have them recap the days arguments, but deliberately misstate and build straw men from the other side’s arguments. Introduce arguments that would never have a chance of getting used in a courtroom. With the entire point of influencing the jury they know is likely watching.

If Fox actually does this and is blatant about it - what could a judge do?

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Karl Hungus's avatar

When looking at actual malice, I'm curious about the reckless disregard standard of looking away from evidence of falsity. If a person, say a youtuber said something about a public figure and the public figure's lawyer sent a C&D telling the "defamer" that the things being said were not true and provided at least some evidence of the falsity, could that be considered reckless disregard? If the defamer went on to repeat or expand upon the claims in question? Could a court find that the evidence the public figure provided and the defamer ignored met the standard?

I ask because Jim Carrey is currently in a dispute with a youtuber who is claiming Carrey was a client of Epstein. Setting aside whether it met the standard when the youtuber made the defamatory claims in the beginning, if the youtuber went on to repeat and expand, could the evidence presented meet that standard?

And setting aside that one particular; in the Dominion suit, if they had sent a letter to Fox outlining evidence when the claim was made the very first time, do the subsequent claims made by Fox rise to the level of reckless disregard?

What is the standard in terms of the inverse of due diligence in these cases?

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Gazeboist's avatar

That's certainly the direction in which the standard points. "Reckless disregard", in the case of the actual malice standard, seems to me to be a backstop against people who would otherwise deliberately evade the "knowing" part of "knowingly lying".

I don't know about the Carrey example, but one thing that comes to mind is actually that Clinton-conspiracy lawsuit that got Trump sanctioned a little while ago. In the first sanctions order, the judge talks about how the Trump team did things like refer to Charles Dolan as a resident of New York despite serving him in Arlington, VA. They received a warning letter explaining that Dolan was, for purposes of that case, essentially just some guy, and persisted in including him in their complaint. Now, this is a sanctions order and not a defamation suit, but Judge Middlebrooks does explicitly say the Trump complaint made "factual allegations that were either knowingly false or made in reckless disregard for the truth".

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Karl Hungus's avatar

I guess what I’m getting at is:

To what extent can a person who believes they are being slandered submit evidence of falsity to head off future attacks. And what probative value is placed on that evidence.

Thanks for taking the time to answer.

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CN's avatar

If you have opinions about the solidity of the arguments made by Dominion in the filing released today, I hope you share them in a future podcast or elsewhere. I'd love to know to what extent I can rely on that filing as a tutorial on the aspects of defamation they address via case law citations. Thank you.

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Laurie Blair's avatar

So after today's release of information about Rupert Murdoch's deposition for the Dominion suit, does Dominion's motion for summary judgment have a better chance of being granted?

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Laurence Yarosh's avatar

Fox's brief claims they are protected by two state doctrines that have nothing to do with the New York Times rule. They say that a news outlet is entitled to report on any accusations against a public official, and that they can report on threatened litigation of any sort, without fear of defamation suits. They assume, of course, that "Fox News" is news, and forget that Tucker Carlson got out of his last lawsuit by saying that he isn't a newscaster at all.

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CN's avatar

I would welcome a discussion of the "apex doctrine".

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Paul Jan's avatar

Did anyone feel the state prosecutor's statement was the sort of thing a lynch mob tells a sheriff - "We could cut down on a lot of billable hours if you opened up that jail and gave that Baldwin fella to us."

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Fran B.'s avatar

When are you two going on the road? With Sara too, of course.

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Phil W's avatar

Ken has a lot of screens in his office.

Are the number of screens that a lawyer has proportional to their billing rate? Or is it the other way around?

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