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Ellora's Cave Sues Dear Author

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The suit link here hinges on several claims Jane made about payments and economic status of the firm.
What’s of particular interest here is the statements in the lawsuit open up the Ellora’s Cave books for discovery since it does indeed revolve around whether or not authors, editors, and employees were paid properly.
I tend to think that Jane probably has her tail covered, or at least mostly so.
Popcorn, anyone?

The House in West Hollywood

I thought I’d add the small amount of fact-checking I tried to do for my own self on the West Hollywood house thing.
Here’s today’s DA tweet about it:


So here’s what I was able to find.

  1. On March 2, Jaid Black/Tina Engler announced on facebook that she was moving from Venice Beach to West Hollywood.

  2. On March 3, Jaid named William Cerqueira as her real estate agent in a facebook post.

  3. Cerqueira has a website, but all the sales listed on it are at least four years old. There’s also this link, which lists no sales at all. That page links to a different, dead website.

  4. Cerqueira’s Yelp listing has an endorsement from Jaid B., who says she leased a home with him as her agent. (Note: I just found this today.)

So here’s the thing: Jane saying that Jaid purchased (rather than leased) a home isn’t inherently defamatory. Even if it were, it’s about Jaid’s personal life in California, which makes me wonder if it’s a valid cause of action for a state suit filed about an Ohio business in state court in Ohio against an Iowa LLC.

Comments

  1. (I’m going to phrase my points a bit obliquely to address general points of law, just out of reflexive caution against the UPL statutes, because IANAL and TINLA.)
    Yes, saying someone bought a house is not in any obvious way defamatory.
    My understanding is the same as yours, that a defamation claim must be brought in the jurisdiction of the aggrieved party, where the allegedly tortious damage to reputation occurred. E.g., if the alleged victim of defamation is in California, then the purported tort occurred there, and the lawsuit needs to be filed there. If filed in the wrong state, such a count should be eminently dismissible on summary judgement. About which, yay.
    Other claims, where plaintiff’s errors occur in the facts rather than the law, can’t be dismissed on summary judgement as (sadly) the facts need to be established at trial.
    Looks to me like Jane will have no trouble what-so-freaking’-ever in debunking the factual claims, based on abundant evidence already posted here, there, and everywhere.
    In short: May I have some of that popcorn?
    (To those accustomed to Internet time: Sorry, this is probably going to go slower than we would like.)

    Reply

  2. Quotations from the complaint (http://www.cpclerk.co.summit.oh.us/PublicSite/Documents/sumq8000014A4.pdf) follow. I plan to use the same convention chillingeffects.org does, of citing language from a document and then commenting in general terms about the meaning and legal context. (This helps the site’s authors, who are talented law students but not attorneys, from avoiding committing Unauthorised Practice of Law.)
    Complaint seeks two things, injunctive relief (temporary and then permanent injunctions) against continued publication of allegedly libellous work, and damages/attorney’s fees for the tort. To do this, the complaint makes three general claims:
    Need for injunctive relief.
    Libel.
    Libel per se.
    Libel per se is written defamation in one of several categories (like my favourite, ‘loathsome disease’) where actual damage doesn’t need to be demonstrated by plaintiff but can be assumed by the inherently damaging nature of the thing alleged.
    Claims two and three rest on thirteen factual claims (on pages 2-4). Some of those claims are fairly pedestrian such as where parties live and do business. The meat of it’s in paragraph 12 on page 3, with seven specifics
    Employees being said to be going unpaid when they’re not.
    Authors not receiving royalty in over six months when they are.
    Unpaid royalties, author fees, and cover artist fees perhaps approaching six figures when they don’t.
    Plaintiff is liquidating assets when it is not.
    That author portal was shut down to prevent authors from checking on their royalties when this was not what happened.
    That plaintiff’s founder has gone on high-end shopping sprees, when she did not.
    That that founder purchased a home in West Hollywood when she did not.
    (I am paraphrasing these factual claims, and carefully avoiding any allegation of my own.)
    It strikes me that the very numerous statements by third parties that have already come out will be extremely useful in a defence based on truth. Truth is only one of a number of defences against allegation of libel, but it may be very useful in this case.
    Wording in the third claim (libel per se):
    reckless disregard for the truth
    This is a term of art from case NY Times v. Sullivan, in which the USSC ruled that a public person may be libelled only if the speaker is also guilty of reckless disregard for the facts, demonstrating actual malice, i.e., the speaker is protected if he/she relied in good faith on sources that turned out to be wrong, but was reasonably diligent in checking facts. Reckless disregard is notoriously difficult to prove.
    suffered economic damages and damage to their reputation and good will
    Underscores the point that defamation is a tort literally requiring economic loss (from damage to the abstract property interest in one’s reputation). Plaintiff asserts that he/she has measurably lost money in the form of lower business prospects, which in turn gives rise to one of the several defences: Defendant might defeat the case by proving that plaintiff’s reputation could not be materially injured because he/she already had a bad one.
    That defensive strategy might appeal if, say, defence were able to cite a dozen authors, an editor or two, and others who’ve already been saying that they’ve not been getting paid — to pick a hypothetical example.

    Reply

  3. A lawsuit being used to chill free speech?
    She should contact @Popehat .
    Ken White is very good at mustering free speech legal support for people from across the political spectrum.

    Reply

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