Serious Trouble in the Chess World
Serious Trouble in the Chess World
Will Hans Niemann checkmate Magnus Carlsen again — in court? Will Sandy Hook families end up owning InfoWars? Why is everyone in this hipster coffee shop talking about Jacob Wohl's guilty plea?
Appears in this episode
Dear listeners,
It’s time for another episode of Serious Trouble!
On this week’s show:
We answer a listener question about what’s likely to happen to InfoWars, now that Alex Jones and his companies are subject to a $965 million defamation judgment.
We talk about legal difficulties at Fox News — including one that’s overblown.
We discuss the prospects of chess prodigy Hans Niemann’s lawsuit, in which he says world chess champion Magnus Carlsen and others defamed him by accusing him of cheating.
And we congratulate Jacob Wohl on his guilty plea to a big-boy state felony — while keeping our eyes on the federal prize.
Episode links and references
Click here for a transcript of this episode.
On the theme of whether the Sandy Hook plaintiffs may end up owning InfoWars, we talked about other unlikely ownership outcomes from civil court. Here are a few:
Here’s a story from the New York Times from 1990, when the IRS put the Mustang Ranch brothel up for sale — it has a lot of colorful detail about what was for sale, in addition to the property itself.
The Church of Scientology owned the Cult Awareness Network, one of its most vocal critics.
Here’s Semafor’s article on the delayed California bar registration of Fox Corp. chief legal officer Viet Dinh. Ken doesn’t think this creates a problem for asserting privilege over legal communications with Dinh — Dinh was a member of the DC bar, which is good enough to create attorney-client privilege — but since Dinh has a dual legal/business role, Fox may not be able to assert privilege over some of his communications anyway, if he wasn’t actually providing legal advice in them.
Here’s the thread from Akiva Cohen we referenced on Niemann’s defamation lawsuit.
This article about some of the anti-cheating measures at a chess tournament taking place this week is interesting. It seems like they should have been doing this all along?
Serious Trouble in the Chess World
Ken,
While we often think about defamation as being constrained by the First Amendment, shouldn't we consider in certain contexts whether there might be other constitutional constraints as well? In this case, there is the allegation of use of an electronic buttplug or anal beads. As you know, such marital aids are protected under the right to privacy established in Griswold v. Connecticut. "It follows that the Texas statute cannot define sexual devices themselves as obscene and prohibit their sale." Reliable Consultants, Inc. v. Earle, 517 F.3d 738, 747 (5th Cir. 2008) ("Such devices include, but are not limited to, 'a dildo or artificial vagina'"). As a result, shouldn't Carlsen argue that the use of private marital aids is constitutionally protected and thus cannot form the basis for a claim of defamation?
Additionally, if Serious Trouble is thinking about swag ideas, I think a t-shirt which reads "The Penumbras Protect Butt Stuff" would sell well.
Ken:
On venue, does it matter that St. Louis is the de facto chess capital of the US? St. Louis is home to many top American players (likely because it is also home to Rex Sinquefield-- namesake of the tournament and primary patron of American chess).
By analogy, is venue proper in the Middle District of Tennessee in most/all defamation cases about country music, even if the defendants don’t live in Nashville, and their statements were made online?