Can you imagine the founding fathers making war against England without maligning King George III in the process? Or Barack and Hillary volunteers refusing to talk trash about their opponents? And when neighborhood groups get up in arms, do you suppose moderation is the watchword? Democracy is rude.
Members of the chamber, Okon wrote, “only care about how much money and power they have. Perhaps Mr. Jaeger also personally wrote them each a check… who knows for sure.”
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To get Jaeger’s suit thrown out, attorney Daliah Saper had to argue that the truth of Okon’s post was not an issue because he was simply offering opinion, which is generally protected under libel and defamation law. This obliged Saper, in a sense, to disrespect her client. “Statements expressing mere opinions or commentary do not constitute defamation,” she wrote in her July 27 motion to dismiss the suit; the language Jaeger was challenging was “mere rhetorical hyperbole and speculation.” A blog, she argued, “is a well-known subjective forum that is inherently unreliable as a source of factual information…. It is obvious to any viewer that the site is subjective and biased, that the statements made are done so with figurative and hyperbolic language, and that information contained in these statements is not to be taken as credible.”
The CPA explains itself this way: “There has been a disturbing increase in lawsuits termed ‘Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation’ in government or ‘SLAPPS.’… The threat of SLAPPS significantly chills and diminishes citizen participation in government….It is the purpose of this Act to strike a balance between the rights of persons to file lawsuits for injury and the constitutional rights of persons to petition, speak freely, associate freely, and otherwise participate in government.”
Saper: “Was the website only up for one—that posting was only up for one night, right?”
Jaeger: “Words, actions, everything.”
