Our founding fathers may not have guaranteed the right to free speech in the first draft of the U.S. Constitution, but it did make it into the very first amendment to the document. A series of Supreme Court rulings during the Civil Rights movement extended the right to free speech,…
A federal appeals court has revived a portion of Representative Devin Nunes’s defamation lawsuit that was dismissed last year finding that the defendant’s tweeting a link to the allegedly defamatory article after the lawsuit was filed could satisfy the actual malice requirement. In September 2018, Esquire magazine published an article…
A federal District Court recently dismissed the defamation claims filed by embattled attorney Michael Avenatti against Fox News and several of its anchors. In its decision, the District Court found that Avenatti’s claims failed to overcome the high hurdle to sustaining defamation claims against a media defendant. In the Court’s…
When you’re a politician, your career is made or broken on your reputation. Donald Trump has been sued for defamation several times, with varying rates of success. Now his son, Donald Trump, Jr., is also being sued for defamation over allegations he made concerning another Republican candidate. Don Blankenship was…
In 1964 the case of New York Times v. Sullivan reached the Supreme Court, which interpreted the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to mean public figures have a higher bar to clear when suing for libel. The intention of the First Amendment is to give citizens the freedom to…
After a police officer pressured a woman for oral sex in a suburb of Chicago, including harassing her at her place of work, the woman filed a lawsuit against the police officer and Cook County. For obvious reasons, she asked the court to allow her to remain anonymous, filing the…
News conglomerate Fox News finds itself fighting against not one, but two multi-billion dollar defamation lawsuits over its post-2020 election reporting. The plaintiffs in these lawsuits are the companies that ran electronic voting machines used during the election. In their complaints, the plaintiffs accuse Fox News and its on-air hosts…
Not every renter loves his landlord. And many people express their feelings, for better or for worse, on social media. However, sometimes what is said on social media can land a person in hot water. Such was the case for one Iowa resident whose social media venting landed him in…
As we previously covered here, an Illinois appellate court revived a lawsuit filed by Chicago Bears legend Richard Dent which seeks to learn the identity and addresses of unidentified individuals who published allegedly defamatory statements about Dent which allegedly cost him several lucrative marketing contracts. Following the ruling in Dent’s…
On March 18, the Illinois Supreme Court issued a much awaited opinion finding that private investigator Paul Ciolino’s defamation lawsuit against Chicago attorney Terry Ekl among others was not filed too late. In their briefs before the Court, the parties framed the question in terms of whether or not the…