Rittenhouse wants Biden to Apologise to him

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Defamation requires damages to occur, so they know how to compensate the damaged individual appropriately. "Damages" does not mean "your feelings". If you say, and prove, that you lost X amount of business, Or X Y and Z contracts, worth $$ amount, then the judge can compensate you for that loss. You have to actually lose a tangible thing, directly as a result.

The point of a defamation isn't to punish naughty behavior - it's to compensate for an actual loss incurred as a direct result of malicious or careless actions. There is no dollar amount attached to "feelings", even if they're hurt, or even if money would make you feel better. Kyle could try to claim duress, but given that he's been out partying and doing the interview rounds, he doesn't seem like he's in much duress. And even if he was, he'd have to prove it was purely and entirely as a result of biden's comments (which would have to be explicitly stated as known fact) - and not, for example, for having killed people, or for being a dumb kid.

Even in a liability suit, the point isn't "oh you poor baby lets give you money so you feel better and to punish those nasty people". It's to cover the actual damages suffered as a result of the negligence or liability. You break your leg, you get the medical bills covered. You miss work as a result, you get compensated based on what you'd normally earn. In some instances, particularly egregious acts may be further penalized as a warning or additional punishment may be included for repeat offenders. The main reason suits start with high numbers is because they know it's going to get slashed down, so they start big to anchor it at a higher number.

As for news sites, there's arguably a difference between telling a lie, and getting something wrong. If a news outlet is reporting something in good faith that they believe to be true - and especially if they take care with their wording and use terms like "allegedly" or "supposedly" or "is said/believed to be" - that pretty much protects them right there. Because it was not stated as FACT.

Kyle was in the wrong place at the right time, and got lucky. He happened to fail upward into the national spotlight, and now he think's he's hot stuff. He gets to be on TV, and get into celebrity feuds, and people clap for him, just like the other big important adults. If he's going to demand an apology every time someone has an unflattering opinion of him, he's in for a really nasty surprise.

What about the argument about "slander" on one's public "reputation"?

Should the Washington Post have ignored Nicholas Sandmann's litigation? why did they settle out of court? It's not as if Sandmann could demonstrate financial loss since he was a nobody in highschool

One's reputation, and the loss thereof, can still be quantified monetarily. One still has to demonstrate how their reputation was damaged, and that the untrue claim directly caused that damage. As to how one does this, an example would be a youtuber. The claim would go something like "their lie caused me to lose enough subscribers to be demonetized by this dollar amount" or "advertisers withdrew contracts / sponsors withdrew sponsorships worth this dollar amount explicitly because of this lie". Or even "I was refused work, explicitly because of this lie". You cannot claim imaginary opportunities that may or may not exist, that "might be" denied in the future. You can't proactively claim things that haven't even happened yet.

Now, lets say you're a youtuber, and you lost subscribers, but you were never monetized in the first place. You'd be hard pressed to claim damages, since nothing meaningful was lost. The only consequence to fewer subscribers, is fewer subscribers. You're not monetized, so you didn't lose money. You really can't claim it prevented future monetization, cos there's no reason to believe you'd have been monetized anyways. It's aspirational value-claiming, with no actual basis for the value being claimed.

As for cases that settle out of court, a lot of people mistakenly believe that a settlement means an admission. Realistically, lawsuits cost money. Lots of money. And if someone sues you, and you don't defend yourself, you've essentially waived the right to defend yourself. So if someone with enough money to throw away decides to sue you, they can do that just to make you have to go to court, and face all those expenses, or basically "admit guilt" by default if you don't show up, or simply lose if they hire a slick lawyer, and you have a public defender fresh out of law school. They then offer to settle out of court, for less than it would cost you if they tied you up in court with appeals for years. They're called SLAPP suits.

A Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, SLAPP suit, or intimidation lawsuit is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.

And they work, if you have more money to waste than your opponent does.

Ok, this makes sense now.

So in the case of Sandmann or Rittenhouse it's lost opportunity to earn money through potentially employers choosing to not hire them.

I guess that also explains Central Park Karen Amy Cooper's law suit against Franklin Templeton Investment firm.

Future vice presidential candidate for the GOP Kyle Rittenhouse under the Trump ticket?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 76813.html

Never seen somebody accused of double homicide become such a celebrity
https://www.star-telegram.com/sports/nf ... 26356.html

Rittenhouse hanging around Trump is like a flea looking for a dog to lie with

Well, it's a little deeper than that. You have to have been made an offer, and had it denied, or have sought an offer, and had it denied. You can't simply claim that in the future, you MIGHT be denied, but haven't actually been denied yet. That's like if two people NEARLY had a car accident, but no actual damage occurred, but the one driver still wants money for the "damages" that could have happened, if they had collided.

If XYZ News offers me a job, then rescinds the job, that's a loss. But if XYZ News never offered me a job to begin with, I have no way of proving that I ever even had the opportunity, let alone was denied from it. You have to claim actual incurred losses. I didn't suffer a loss, because I never HAD that thing I'm claiming to have lost, to begin with.

And don't forget, frivolous SLAPP suits both exist, and work.



Pro-tip: If you're going to tell someone you can "cut them up in only two paragraphs", it loses some of it's edge if you say it in the seventh paragraph. It also helps if you actually "cut someone up" at some point.

But hey, at least you admitted that you're aim is to "cut people up". Although, all you actually did was project your own behaviors back onto me.

It also loses it's edge when you claim that I'm the one whining about being silenced and gang stalked, and then shortly after, you whine about your little trio having to stand alone in the face of an entire forum against you.

If you're gonna have Special-K for breakfast, make sure it's the cereal.



I'm sure Kyle would make a fine replacement for Dick Cheney... Just don't go "hunting" with him, either...

Not since OJ Simpson. And he was already famous.

Kyle, an innocent young babe looking for a golden teat to suckle, and only finding a big orange boob.

Last edited by Cornflake on 17 Dec 2021, 3:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.: Removed some name-calling

Wait, so why did the Washington post settle with Nicholas Sandmann ovet the Covington incident?? Sandmann's case for defemation should never have gone anywhere and when you watch his interview with Tucker Carlson he admits he only wanted to test the water in terms of seeing if he could extract money from media outlets who published claims about him.



OJ simpson was a champion athlete and Hollywood celebrity. He built his career from being sports star.
Kyle is a one-trick pony. And a bad one.

I'd have to look up the filings, but I don't think Sandman was ever just a defamation case. Sandman was a private citizen doing nothing wrong when he went viral. That he went viral for dubious reasons was bad enough; that isn't something he could have sued over, I don't think. But when news organizations picked it up, they had a duty to verify the facts, and they did not. It was lazy journalism, to simply report on what was going viral, and it lent legitimacy to something that hadn't earned it. The WaPo actually did some excellent articles on their own mea culpa, how viral stories spread, and what the damage to the subjects can be. I might go so far as to suggest they felt some guilt and wanted to settle, but that might be stretching it.

But is not checking facts open them media to defamation if the only damage is puported to be reputation? If this was the case then wouldn't every media outlet be out of business? Fox news would have long been bankrupted.

If you can't equate loss of future earnings with a news story to a defamation "payout" then all the Washington Post (in the Sandmann case) were trying to achieve to settle out of court was to avoid having to a) retract their statements about Nicolas Sandmann and b) issue an apology and finally c) tarnish their reputation with advertisers as quality publication.

There's also this little thing that I don't think anyone has mentioned yet called punitive damages, and they can be damn near arbitrary, in some cases regardless of the amount of material damage the defamation might have done. Get a jury that wants to send a message about publicly smearing people, and it could be pay day, it's a roll of the dice.

Any precedences?

It was probably cheaper to pay Sandmann off with the stipulation that he cannot reopen the case. Remember, if someone sues you, you have to respond, or you waive. If Sandmann sued, Post would have to pay to defend. If it was cheaper to settle than to defend from a frivolous suit, that option is taken, quite often. And Sandmann still makes money as a result. It's basically a form of extortion / intimidation.

As for OJ, that was my point. Not since OJ has someone accused of double homicide been so famous, and OJ was already really famous to begin with - thus making Kyle's fame even more absurd, having been a nobody until he was tried.

As for Dox's comment, the jury determines guilt, the JUDGE determines the penalty. The jury doesn't get to "send a message" other than "guilty" or "not guilty". Punitive damages were mentioned, but in a big ole' mean ole' paragraph of some length, so you probably glossed over it.

"particularly egregious acts may be further penalized as a warning or additional punishment may be included for repeat offenders. "

While not as broad as your carte blanche approach to awarding such damages, it does acknowledge that additional punishment (punitive measures) can be tacked on, in certain situations. But that's still up to the JUDGE, not the JURY. And it's still based on more than "muh hurted feeling!" - while they are "damn near arbitrary", in that, since there is no dollar amount of damages that can be verifiably claimed, the judge must therefore invent an arbitrary yet reasonable number to apply to the situation, they are applied for specific reasons, and not just "you said something mean!"

You can't just say "Bob called me a jerk, and now everyone calls me a jerk! I'm suffering! Make Bob pay!" First you'd have to prove that Bob said what you claim he said. It would have to be stated as fact, and not opinion. You would also have to show that Bob calling you a jerk is in fact what resulted in everyone else calling you a jerk, and not you actually being a jerk, and other people simply sharing Bob's opinion of their own accord. You would have to show that being called a jerk was disruptive to your life in some manner, and that you were in fact not being a jerk.

If things of that nature were not required, then anyone could just be a flaming a***hole, and then claim defamation when everyone legitimately thinks they're an a***hole. It also helps avoid defamation suits over legitimate free speech, such as stating one's real and true opinion that they think someone is an a***hole.

Which is where SLAPP suits come in to play. They know they're going to lose. They know they have no case. But you still have to pay money to defend yourself. You can sue for reimbursement, but that's now another suit to pay for. And even if you win, that just means they owe it to you. Making them actually pay is a whole new adventure, and the legal action to do that costs yet more money still. It can cost you more to get your costs reimbursed than the costs themselves, and may take years to do so.

The idea is to use a knowingly fangless suit to still cost the defendant an insane amount of money that they probably can't afford, as a threat to make them stop saying the thing you don't like. The suit would probably fail, and the defendant would probably win the case. But they'd go bankrupt in the process. Most people back down rather than lose all their money, particularly when the person doing the suing CAN afford to throw the money away. If you can afford the cost, then that just becomes the cost of silencing that person.

Yes that's exactly what I was thinking. If you watch the Tucker Carlson interview with Sandmann (following the Rittenhouse vedict) he (Sandmann) described his litigation against the post like "extortion" and now trying his luck with another 5 media outlets to "see if it yields any cash".

He was advocating that Kyle take a mercenary road (like him) in order to i) exact revenge and ii) make money

What's been aiding both their causes is the donations by groups who'se agenda overlaps with these two. I am not sure if Kyle is going to sue? but he certainly has been laying the groundwork by stating he expects an apology.

Whoever sent around that Sandman video and rusted his reputation seems to have created a monster. Talk about backfiring. Perhaps it could have been predicted: Sandman is a child of privilege who was traveling with his private school schoolmates. There is an higher percentage than normal of self-entitled jerks running in such circles.

I think there is a lot more to a damages equation than future earnings, by the way. Sandman was receiving threats, if I recall, and had to take on security measures. May have lost some key opportunities for college admissions or college resume building, as well. All for having an odd look on his face in a situation that got tense and was completely out of his control.

And yet knuckleheads from around the globe will still insist he did something wrong. He deserves every penny he gets, Rittenhouse too if he decides to go that route.

People have a lot of trouble letting go of their first impression conclusions. Best to learn not to make them; I wish more people understood that.