| | Dean:
I agree that it's "fraudulent". But there is no agreement between the slanderer and anyone else where they are now not offering some service or product which they had previously agreed to provide-- no break of verbal or written contract. I'd just say "Wah wah cry baby, wah wah" to the defendant.
Why do you think there needs to be a contract? It's a criminal act (or at least as far as I know it can be). If I smashed all of your car windows, would I not have to pay restitution to you because I have no contract with you? Of course you are saying no property is damaged from the slander so operating from that premise I can see how you may think no restitution is due, but that premise is false. Because of the slander, a business loses its business, that is a destruction of property, and its destruction was due to malicious behavior. But even without this malicious aspect of behavior, you can still sue me for damages if say I accidentally destroyed your property, like say a car accident. We don't need to be in a contract with each other for you to sue me for damages made to your car from that accident. So this appeal that compensatory damages to be justifiable in any context must require a contract is not a rational one.
Jim:
Even if one were to accept the premise in John's post #3, do you think that the federal government has the constitutional power to pass laws limiting free speech in this way
It's not free speech if it violates someone's rights. When we speak of free speech, we are talking about your rights to it within a political context, it's a shame in the English language we don't have a word that specifies that kind of freedom, in Greek it's called "eleftheria" it is a word specifically defined as political freedom, not the kind of freedom an anarchist thinks you have, that being a context-less physical freedom where you can do anything despite the destruction it causes to other people's property.
Inconvenient as untrue statements may be to businesses, it is up to them to counter the slanders with the truth, rather than suing those who falsely malign them.
So because of someone else's malicious and destructive behavior, a company has to spend its own money to conduct a PR campaign to clear up the lies made against them? As a business owner of a brand name hotel I find this idea disconcerting. Apparently according to this philosophy, anyone can destroy my business by spreading lies about it and they can do so with impunity, since there is no cost to bear by the slanderer for his lies, only the victim would then bear almost an unlimited amount of cost to clear up its name because it could be subjected to endless lies about it reputation, driving it straight to bankruptcy. In this kind of world, I could see my competitors trying to do this to me, and likewise in an endless tit for tat war I could respond in kind. They could even run ads with the lies. Better yet, forget anymore new competitors entering into a particular marketplace, a large company with vast resources could simply drive out any smaller competitors by running these malicious ad campaigns against them, which these smaller competitors would not be able to enter the marketplace because they could not afford to defend itself or likewise strike back with lies against this larger competitor.
(Edited by John Armaos on 10/21, 10:00am)
|
|
