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Blogger Ordered to Pay $3.5 Million in Defamation Suit

Alabama blogger Roger Shuler has been ordered to pay $3.5 million in damages in a defamation lawsuit, Alabama Media Group's Kent Faulk reports. The lawsuit was brought by a former campaign manager for Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange over Shuler's posts about an alleged affair between Strange and the campaign manager. He also alleged that Strange was the father of the campaign manager's son.

Shuler  already spent five months in jail before agreeing to remove his posts about the son of a former governor.

Blogger Released After 'Unconstitutional' Pre-Publication Restraining Order

Alabama blogger Roger Shuler was released last month after he spent five months in jail for refusing to delete allegedly defamatory posts about a lawyer and the son of a former Alabama governor, Reporters Without Borders reports. Shuler finally asked his wife to remove the articles in order to get out jail, but his release is conditional.

Reporters Without Border said that the court order "'constitutes prior censorship. It is unacceptable that this blogger has had to renounce his freedom to inform for the sake of his physical freedom.'"

Only Jailed Journalist in the Western Hemisphere Released From Custody

An Alabama blogger was released from jail after being held in contempt for five months for not taking down blog posts that a judge had ruled defamed the son of a former Alabama governor, AL.com reports.

The spouse of Roger Shuler, who blogs at Legal Schnauzer, removed most of the subject matter covered by the judge's permanent injunction, AL.com reported. That led to the judge ordering Shuler's release.

Attorney Robert Riley Jr. filed a defamation lawsuit against Shuler for five blog posts claiming Riley had an extramarital affair, including one that said he impregnated his lover and paid for an abortion.

According to a Committee to Protect Journalists tally, Shuler was only journalist imprisoned in North America.

Law Firm's Libel Lawsuit Shows Peril of Legal Blogging

Submitted by Amaris Elliott-Engel on Sun, 02/23/2014 - 11:36

An excerpt of a piece I wrote for the Connecticut Law Tribune: 

A libel lawsuit being prosecuted by a Connecticut law firm against a California-based legal practice is showing some of the perils of using legal blogs.

Karl D. Shehu, whose Shehu LLC law firm is based in Waterbury, filed a lawsuit alleging defamation by San Diego-based attorney William Adams, of Norton Moore & Adams.

One key ruling so far in the case has been that the Connecticut attorney having a blog and the California lawyer having a blog is not enough to maintain a cause of action under the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA). Another key ruling is that it is insufficient to maintain a CUTPA cause of action if the attorneys are in competition to have their websites appear at the top of search engine results.

According to court papers, Adams sent two emails to Shehu LLC and two officials at the Connecticut Bar Association, Alice Bruno and Bill Chapman, alleging that Shehu spammed his blog, commented on an article with mass-produced, irrelevant remarks, and otherwise "'used a dishonest ruse.'" The subject line allegedly read: "'Your Spam is a professional ethics violation.'" Adams further alleged, according to court papers, that the conduct was unethical and violated American Bar Association professional responsibility rules.

In Shehu's lawsuit, the Connecticut attorney alleges Adams made the comments knowing they were false and with the intention of causing harm to Shehu's reputation and career as an attorney.

In a third email, Adams allegedly contacted the bar association officials again and stated he had no evidence that anyone at the Shehu law firm had personal knowledge of the comments, and he concluded that the comments were "'part of an internet marketing campaign by Shehu LLC.'"

 

Texas Supreme Court Considers Outing Anonymous Blogger

The Texas Supreme Court heard oral argument on whether a blogger who has criticized an Ohio-based company should be unmasked by court order, the Associated Press reported. The blogger's attorney argued that Texas courts don't have personal jurisdiction over the blogger, while the company's attorney argues that Texas does have jurisdiction because its CEO owns a home in Houston and the company has its largest Texas office in Houston. During oral argument, Chief Justice Nathan Hecht questioned if Texas should "be concerned that its courts can be used to investigate any cause of action that could be brought anywhere in the United States. Why should Texas courts just be sort of the State Bureau of Investigation?" according to the AP.

Senate Judiciary Committee Passes 'Kevlar Not Kryptonite' Shield Bill

Submitted by Amaris Elliott-Engel on Thu, 09/12/2013 - 13:38

After a four-year process, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill today that would establish a federal shield law for reporters so that they would have a legal privilege to not have to reveal their confidential sources in most circumstances. The bill passed out of committee after months of uproar that the Justice Department monitored journalists at the Associated Press and Fox News and after another huge national-security leak was carried out by security-contractor Edward Snowden regarding the National Security Agency's surveillance of Americans.

During the committee meeting, the bill's definition of a covered journalist was revised to include three tests:

1. a test regarding journalists with bona fide credentials who are employees, independent contractors or agents of entitities that disseminate news or information;

2. a functional test for anyone who has entered the function as a reporter, such as someone who has done a sizeable amount of freelance work in the last five years;

3. a release valve allowing federal judges the discretion to find that someone is a covered journalist involved in legitimate newsgathering activitiesand  who should be granted the reporter's privilege in the interest of justice.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, said the legislation was "Kevlar but not kryptonite" in terms of the strength of its protections. The pendulum might swing again toward federal prosecutors who want to pursue leakers and the reporters who they leak to, Schumer said, so the bill is timely and necessary.

The amendment on who the bill will cover is a compromise from the original bill, which would have established an intent test, Schumer said. But Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, and Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, had a difference of opinion on who should be covered, he said.

Feinstein offered the amendment that redefined the definition of journalists covered by the legislation.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said that carving out any portion of the journalism sector "is in effect government licensing of the legitimate media" and would run afoul of the U.S. Constitution.

Cornyn and Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, were the two of the most vocal opponents of the bill.

Sessions said the scope of the bill was not restrictive enough and at least twice questioned how the bill would deal with Al Jazeera, which is funded by Qatar, or the hypothetical situation of a spy masquerading as an independent journalist.

But Feinstein retorted that the application of the privilege can be appropriately determined by federal judges as "journalism has a certain tradecraft attached to it."

But later Feinstein added that without parameters on who gets the privilege, "if a Snowden were to sit down and write this stuff he would have a privilege."

While Schumer asked if Sessions was aware that the bill would exempt leaks that cause significant and articulable harm to national security, Sessions said that's hard to show.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said that the bill would create a privilege for journalists who "happen to receive a paycheck from a corporate media entity" but not for citizen journalists. Some of the Founding Fathers were citizen journalists, he said.

Opening up the privilege to all bloggers would go too far in drawing the line between the freedom of expression and national security, Durbin said.

On the same thought, Schumer said: "What do you do with citzien bloggers? Some are legitimate journalists and some are not."

Several other amendments proposed by Cornyn and Sessions failed, including amendments that would exempt any information relevant to a leak of classified information and any information regarding grand juries.

Leahy said the failed amendment to exempt leaks of classified information would have meant the torture at Abu Ghraib would have remained undisclosed.

 

 

 

Federal Shield Law Up For Consideration This Morning

Submitted by Amaris Elliott-Engel on Thu, 09/12/2013 - 09:40

On the agenda this morning for the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is the federal shield law, otherwise known as the Free Flow of Information Act of 2013. There will be a live webcast of the meeting at 10 a.m.: http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/hearing.cfm?id=6225bf1b82d2592b...

Some in the media community say that the bill needs to be amended drastically because it would only shield journalists working for institutional players for pay and not "bloggers, freelancers, and other non-salaried journalists" (which is amusing to me as I was a professional journalist until about three weeks ago and now am a lawyer writing/reporting as an unpaid blogger on the side). Others say, even though the bill is "vague, clumsy and poorly written," that the time is ripe for a federal shield law in a moment when investigative revelation after revelation is showing how much government surveillaince is occuring in the name of security: http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/congress-should-pass-the-federal-shield-...

When a shield law was up for consideration a couple of years ago, the legislation at the time was killed off because of the massive information leaks from WikiLeaks. Now, even though we are in the middle of another leaking controversy due to Edward Snowden, the legislation appears to be advancing because of the discomfort that has arisen out of the relevation of the monitoring the Associated Press and Fox News faced from the federal government: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/us/politics/under-fire-white-house-pus...

I'll be monitoring the meeting and write an update later on what I learn.

PS. Also on the agenda are the nominations of five federal judges and one United States Attorney.

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