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Planned Parenthood is being sued for defamation by 17 people who say they’re members of the ad hoc Fox Valley Families Against Planned Parenthood, and by the Chicago-based Pro-Life Action League, founded by Joseph Scheidler in 1980. Scheidler’s son Eric, who lives in Aurora and spearheaded Fox Valley Families, is one of the 17 plaintiffs.
This past Wednesday, Planned Parenthood filed a motion asking the Kane County circuit court to dismiss the lawsuit. The brief arguing this motion makes interesting reading. Patrick Donnelly, a Chicago attorney who recently found himself looking down the business end of the Citizen Participation Act told me, “Not to sound like a gun nut, but there are enough laws [already] on the books that if someone sues someone improvidentially, someone can take a whack back at them.” He might point to the Planned Parenthood brief for support. It argues for dismissal on a variety of familiar grounds: because the allegedly defamatory statements were true, because they can be given an innocent construction, because they didn’t even refer to the individual plaintiffs.
