by Paul Alan Levy I recently had the pleasure of representing Dan McCall again — author of such wicked parodies as NSA – the Only Part of Government That Actually Listens (we got to sue the NSA for a declaratory judgment of noninfringement); Ready for Oligarchy (over which we came with hours of filing suit […]
Author Archives: Paul Levy
by Paul Alan Levy Today we entered an important case that will determine whether New York’s new and improved anti-SLAPP law protects the authors of consumer reviews against being sued for defamation when they reveal publicly that they were less than thrilled with a business’s services or products. The case arose from the horrible experience […]
by Paul Alan Levy Civil rights activists in Cobb County, Georgia, have been urging members of the community to come in force to the impending school board meeting on June Tenth to celebrate Juneteenth by signing up to speak in support of minority members of the school board, who have been under fire recently. Somebody […]
by Paul Alan Levy When Keep Pushing, a St. Louis community organization devoted to protecting the unhoused, went door-to-door to speak to tenants facing eviction orders and hand out a flyer about their rights under the CDC eviction moratorium, one of the landlords whose tenants were visited, Norwood 2020, was desperate to suppress this potential threat […]
by Paul Alan Levy Our latest case about the right to speak anonymously is in federal court in Chicago, flowing from a dispute between a prominent vlogger named Cristina Villegas and a plastic surgeon named David Shifrin who, Villegas complained, “botched my nose job.” Villegas posted a 23-minute-long YouTube video which recounts the inadequacies that […]
by Paul Alan Levy Last month, a Fells Point restaurant was able to use an apparently baseless threat of defamation litigation to secure a vote renewing its liquor license by the liquor control board despite considerable neighborhood complaints. Baltimore attorney Scott Marder apparently a demand letter to every one of the 15 neighbors who objected, […]
by Paul Alan Levy In a decision issued his afternoon, Judge Barbara Rothstein has denied a motion by the infamous web site Parler seeking a preliminary injunction compelling Amazon to reverse its decision to terminate its hosting of Parler's web site. The judge agreed with Amazon that, under its hosting contract, Parler was subject to […]
by Paul Alan Levy Although Maryland was one of the first states to adopt an anti-SLAPP law, its weaknesses have become apparent over the years as other states have adopted stronger protections against suits brought to suppress free speech. Two of the most important obstacles to effectiveness of the statutes are found in the statute’s […]
by Paul Alan Levy A couple of months ago, South Carolina lawyer B. Craig Killough advanced vague intellectual property claims in objecting to a blog post by a California health policy expert who commented on some aspects of the pricing policies being followed by Palmetto GBA, one of the companies retained by the federal Centers […]
by Paul Alan Levy With a signature last week from Governor Cuomo, New York has become the latest state to enact a strong anti-SLAPP law. Addressing flaws that came to the fore in our recent defense of Richard Robbins, the new statute considerably broadens the scope of speech covered by anti-SLAPP protections, and, requires a […]