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Calling All Lawyers
On the front page of the New York Times online at this hour:
Question for Mssrs. Epstein and Yoo and all the lawyers here at Ricochet: The fraternity in question has been subjected to months of public humiliation, including condemnation by officials of the University of Virginia. Does it have any legal recourse against either Rolling Stone or the University?
Published in General, Law
When the story of the UVA (non) rape first broke, I was with my niece who is a senior at a comparable southern school and majoring in journalism. I looked her straight in the eye and said, “It’s a fake.”
“How can you say that?” she asked incredulously.
I replied that I didn’t think that it passed a basic smell test. There was no physical evidence. It assumed that multiple members of a fraternity conspired to commit the sexual assault and that it was somehow part of an illicit rite of the organization. Surely there would have been other victims over the years. How could an organization continue to hide such barbarity? I was 20 once and in a fraternity that got in all sorts of trouble. We couldn’t agree on what beer to buy for a party. I had trouble believing that were they guilty of the assault, the young men at UVA could hold up to interrogation.
If the wikipedia bio for Sabrina Erdely – the author of the Rolling Stone article – is accurate (and I realize that this is a BIG “if” – worthy of more skepticism than Rolling Stone itself engaged in) then the following is true:
(1) This isn’t the first time that her reporting lent legitimacy to sensational and ultimately disproved claims of rape. Her reporting on the Philadelphia Catholic Church was at least partially – if not completely – false. According to Wikipedia, the accused went to jail and one of them died there before exoneration. A quick review of the sources cited in the wikipedia entry suggest that *at a minimum* the most sensational parts of her story proved to be false. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabrina_Erdely#cite_note-16
(2) Ms. Erdely has made somewhat of a career on seeking out such stories.
(3) The NY times and/or the Columbia Journalism’s School’s reports simply omit any mention of items 1 and 2 in their respective reports tonight.
If Ms. Erdely and her editors *don’t* get fired (and Jan Werner suggests that they will not be) what constitutes a friable offense at Rolling Stone?
If the accused young men were named, and possibly even if they weren’t, they may have a claim for defamation against Rolling Stone. It’s also possible the fraternity itself might, but without knowing how it’s organized, there may be some impediments to it bringing that claim.
As far as the University goes, I’m not aware of any facts to give rise to a claim, but I’m not necessarily up on all the facts. There might be something out there I just don’t know about.
Will Haven Monahan sue? He is not cleared in the report…
Also, the frat was not just subjected to public humiliation. It was actually vandalized, with a significant amount of damage done to the property.
One hopes that the frat and any individuals will sue loudly, largely and publicly. This sort of stuff needs to be aggressively fought.
I’ll donate to any defense fund…
I have not studied defamation in a long time in the context of a group that has been defamed. The UVA chapter of fraternity may be organized as a corporation. For purposes of bringing a defamation suit is a corporation a “person” in Virginia? My scientific wild ass guess is that it is.
If the group is small enough, each member of the fraternity at UVA would probably have a claim because they have all been accused of participating in a criminal conspiracy of a “ritualistic” rape of a woman. There have been cases through the years that have put an upper limit on the number of people in a group who could sue individually for defamatory statements pertaining to the entire group. I’m dragging that out of my memory banks.
The easy question is whether this was libel per se, which does not require pleading and proving special (i.e. economic) damages. This was an accusation of a crime and so it qualifies.
In my jurisdiction the plaintiff(s) could even recover attorney’s fees because the conduct amounted to an intentional tort, assuming they took it to trial and persuaded a jury to award such.
The scarey thing for Rolling Stone is that they may not have the qualified privilege from the New York Times v. Sullivan case that requires proof of “malice,” which is an esoteric concept created by the opinion in that case. Don’t go looking for the definition of “malice” in your Webster’s dictionary. Therefore, it would be very difficult to get a suit thrown out with a motion for summary judgment. They won’t have the privilege because the plaintiffs were not public figures before RS defamed them.
A suit vs. UVA would probably be for violation of their constitutional rights to receive a fair hearing (due process) from the university before they were condemned. That would be a suit under 42 USC Sec. 1983. There has to be a Ricochet member who had litigated a 1983 case vs. a public university who can comment on the issues presented by the RS story being treated as authoritative by UVA without any investigation.
He and Obama’s imaginary son are opening a bakery in Indiana together, They will specialize in gay wedding cakes.
Billy, Billy,
Have you not been following the news? They will be baking wedding pizzas.
Glad to see some more good news this Easter Sunday.
Remarkable, the depth of talent we have here at Ricochet.
You speak the truth, RushBabe, you speak the truth.
I was going to say that while damages are pretty easy to find, and you could also likely find negligence, I’m not sure whether things like slander/libel require intent.
Think of the law as a pie with a thousand slices (probably more). Most attorneys know a whole lot about one slice… Professors (like E & Y) know a lot about most of the pie, but they wouldn’t know where to file a pleading or how to properly read a case onto the record. That said, we all do like to think we know everything.
… that brings back memories of exam studies. Goodness!
Don’t know about guns, but someone should probably send RS lawyers and money.
Even if legally correct, my advice could prove as predictive as that of the lawyers who likely told Mark Steyn: “Mark, DC has an anti-SLAPP law. If you don’t challenge personal jurisdiction, the case will be dismissed within months. If you force Mann to sue you in New Hampshire, the case could drag out for years.”
If Mann can sue NR and Steyn, why couldn’t the students and frat sue media outlets? What facts/factors are potentially more favorable to Mann?
A local TV station has several reports from their legal analyst.
The editing process failed from start to finish, and yet Rolling Stone’s response is that no changes need be made to its policies and procedures.
Incredible.
Perhaps a GoFundMe campaign should be started for the fraternity.
… on the one hand, I’d say yes. But on the other hand, while I think that being unfairly targeted by Rolling Stone and subjected to the fallout is bad, but I don’t know these guys from Adam.
UVa president Teresa Sullivan should be sued into the poorhouse. She eagerly went along with this witch hunt, and used her power as university president to do so, without so much as a hearing for the frat. She’s a damned disgrace, and has yet to even apologize, let alone take steps to make things right. I suspect that, just as in the case of Sabrina Erdely, she thinks they’re guilty of something, or should be, and regrets losing the ammo that the original story gave her, and, like Erdely, won’t apologize to those people.
I’m not sure you’ve said what you think she’s guilty of under the laws & why a lawsuit is the proper reaction. Let’s say instead, & meanwhile, that the people who send their kids at UVa are looking pretty despicable now, as to the notables there…
I doubt Sullivan could be successfully sued, but she must be removed from office; hounded if necessary. She has been a disaster for the University. She failed her duties in every respect. Furthermore, those faculty who joined in the lynch mob should also be driven out. They should be treated to thousands of small, petty cuts, and have their daily lives made miserable.
I do not advocate physical harm or property damage, like what they encouraged against INNOCENT fraternities, but a constant online and real time shaming. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how they can be made miserable. For starters I would like to see a web/Facebook page up listing them, their rushes to judgment, their office address and classes taught. Then continue on with how little time they actually teach, their perks, etc. Lastly, advertise the page in the Cavalier Daily…
I am furious that these unworthies are polluting Mr. Jefferson’s Academical Village with their continued presence in it. They. Are. Not. Worthy.
She suspended, not only that frat, but the entire Greek system as a hysterical reaction to RS’s article. No one got as much as a simple hearing on the matter. And the frat in question’s property was damaged, because she gave every appearance of siding with Rolling Stone on this issue and declaring them guilty until proven innocent.
I always find it remarkable that Americans think courts have magic powers. What the president did was wrongheaded, bad policy, & worse. But was it illegal? What is the crime of which she is to stand accused?
The only crime under discussion is the gang rape the students were accused of. Don’t you remember the case of the Duke Lacrosse team that had a similar unfounded accusation and were condemned by Duke’s administration and faculty before the story fell apart?
If your constitutional rights to property and freedom of association are violated by a state official, the law provides a remedy with a civil (not criminal) lawsuit. The money damages awarded may be nominal but the vindication of the victims rights is often worth it to them. There is also the deterrence effect on the abuse of governmental power.
Of course there is a faction out there who do not believe that white males should have any civil rights vindicated in court (present company excepted).
Not even the police or prosecutors decided to treat it as a crime, nor was there anyone pressing charges. It’s not even an alleged crime, really. It’s the phantom crime–it would have been a crime or at least the allegation of one had anyone alleged the allegation.
I do. Liberals who wield power are that way. It hurts liberals & the people whenever the people authorize them to use power by election or in some other way. More fool them, everyone, really.
But that is not important–in the Duke case, those three boys were arrested & charged. An evil petty monster wanted to prosecute them, although there was no reasonable grounds for that, & long after unreasonable grounds should have been disallowed by the evidence. That is indeed gov’t looking for the great white defendant, as Tom Wolfe put it, & finding it in triplicate, for once, which must have been as much a dream come true for bureaucrats as for numerologists.
Was there such a violation in the UVa case?
Yeah, but there is also a downside for society–litigious societies are dangerous. Getting there is not just a matter of righting wrongs committed against you, it’s also a matter of fantasizing wrongs & trying to right them. The lefties & liberals do that a lot; but they’re not the only ones & they get cover because this is a democratic vice, not a lefty vice. (Tyrannizing people for their own good & slaughtering them in the millions is a lefty vice, for comparison; betraying America also.)
Yes, there is. I happen to think there are not many civil rights white males want to vindicate, in court or otherwise. As always, I have difficulty standing up for those who do not want to stand up for themselves.
Nice discussion.