by Paul Alan Levy Ted Frank’s comment on my post yesterday about the y-y-yuge sanction imposed on Donald Trump for bringing a frivolous defamation claim hit the nail on the head – this was an April Fools Day prank. But as Eric Turkewitz, who created the concept and posted the first blog on the subject, explains […]
Author Archives: Paul Levy
by Paul Alan Levy Could a $500,000,000 sanction for frivolous litigation be large enough that even Donald Trump would start taking the First Amendment seriously, and stop trying to use the courts to suppress lawful speech that he doesn’t like? In the final analysis, that is the issue raised by Erik Turkewitz’ blog post today. […]
by Paul Alan Levy Techdirt carries word of an ingenious scheme that two California lawyers have been running to get unflattering reviews removed from Google’s search results without ever proving defamation in an adversary proceeding and, indeed, without risk of an adversary proceeding. Opinion Corp., which hosts the consumer review site PissedConsumer.com, noticed a suspicious […]
Resolving an ambiguity in the District of Columbia's Anti-SLAPP law, the DC Court of Appeals held today in Doe No. 1 v. Burke that a defendant who succeeds in a special motion to quash a subpoena for the defendant's identifying information is presumptively entitled to have attorney fees awarded, absent special circumstances rendering such an […]
An article by Paul Farhi in this morning’s Washington Post discusses a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump against the Timothy O'Brien, a financial author who wrote a book about Trump's business career. Among other things, the book questioned whether Trump is quite as wealthy as he claims; the author’s opinion was that Trump had exaggerated […]
by Paul Alan Levy A comment to my recent blog post about Prestigious Pets, a Dallas pet care company that recently sued two of its customers for negative reviews, suggested an interesting approach for dealing with businesses that use non-disparagement clauses to block customers from posting accurate but unflattering reviews. Although consumer advocates place hope […]
by Paul Alan Levy Until recently, a Dallas, Texas pet-sitting service called Prestigious Pets enjoyed a fairly high rating on Yelp – most of the reviews gave it five stars. There were, however, two one-star dissents, one from Michelle D and one from Tatiana N, each of whom objected, in fairly mild terms, to some […]
by Paul Alan Levy In an opinion that bristles with significant issues, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit by Sgt. Jeffrey Sarver asserting that a Hollywood studio could not release a film based, in part, on a fictional portrayal of important public events in which he […]
by Paul Alan Levy Last month I wrote about a proceeding in which Michigan’s Attorney Grievance Commission was investigating Steven Gursten, a Michigan lawyer who had criticized Dr. Rosalind Griffin, a member of the state disciplinary apparatus, for perjuring herself in expert testimony in one of his cases. I argued that the very process of […]
by Paul Alan Levy The lawyers for Gordon Austin, the former Carrollton Georgia dentist who filed a lawsuit over the YouTube posting of a news report about his indictment for having beat his patients with a dental instrument when, insufficiently anesthetized, they cried out in pain, have now withdrawn his subpoena to identify the poster, paid […]