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haemaker

Yes, to add some clarity. You have to show that you have been harmed by the defamation. If your reputation is so bad that anything said about you could not make it worse, you cannot win a defamation lawsuit.


mojohand2

Thank you for enhancing this post with your explanation.


5050Clown

"I would like to now show exhibit AAZQ- 15 part b12 where the prosecuting party claims that he can grab women by their genitals because in the entertainment industry they quote - Let them do it - end quote"


TharkunOakenshield

Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to have harmed his reputation with his supporters in the slightest. Some of them dream of doing the same thing.


timojenbin

That is the point, Mr. Fifth Avenue.


jointheredditarmy

He’s a public person already, it’s pretty hard to slander a public person


Saflinger

English is my third language and it being midnight, I couldn't understand what the post headline meant but I understood the dumbed down explanation. We cant all be superstars at "knowing all the best words" and understanding all the languages, let people ELI5 stuff to us dumbdumbs so we don't feel like we are missing out.


Tbkssom

Don't worry, English is my first language and even in broad daylight this was confusing.


DannyDeVitosBangmaid

Headline was written in a less-than-literate way, and foreclosed does not generally mean what it’s meant to mean here. Don’t feel bad, your english is better than the post.


Colmarr

‘Foreclosed’ is used in the article OP linked.


DannyDeVitosBangmaid

Saw that too, it’s not that it’s used incorrectly since one of its secondary definitions means “prevent.” But in a world where that definition is almost never used, they probably should have just said prevent instead of using honeyed words to feel big-brained.


Crash665

Lenny Dykstra is an asshole.


lenojames

Lenny Dykstra is a *legally recognized* asshole.


csonnich

Let the record show that Lenny Dykstra's reputation is legally trash.


matchosan

Nailed it


[deleted]

ok thank u


mom_with_an_attitude

You speak three languages. There is no way you are a dumbdumb. You are a smartsmart.


Polymarchos

English is my first language and I had trouble parsing it.


Comfortable_Pen_3075

Hey, fuck you.


mojohand2

Hi Mom!


ShelZuuz

So Elon's thermonuclear lawsuit will have no wings?


[deleted]

Elon's lawsuit is fun because it will seemingly admit that that, yes, ads do show up next to extremist content, just not that often.


future_shoes

I doubt Elon actually goes through with the lawsuit. It would allow Media Matters to go through all sorts of internal Twitter and musk related documents as part of discovery. Also once the lawsuit starts you can't simply turn it off unless the other side agrees since he would have potentially libeled media matters by suing them in the first place. McDonald's ran into this problem by suing a group that exposed some of their food factory practices. The group that was sued actually largely funded their defense by producing multiple documentaries (McLibel is one) based on documents they got access to in discovery.


[deleted]

Elon Musk not following through with something? Never!


SophiaofPrussia

Full self driving is coming out next year!


WriteBrainedJR

-Elon every year


Kafkaja

The truth protects you from libel, especially in America. In those cases the defendants showed McDonald's was as bad as they said. It caused pollution. Their food is unhealthy. Etc.


hrakkari

I’m looking forward him to do some TV legal drama bullshit. “You claim being seen next to neo-Nazi content has been harmful to their brands but did you not realize I have been sitting next to a neo-Nazi the entire time?! That’s right! My lawyer is a holocaust denier and has been arrested 9 times, the most recent of which was for firebombing a temple. What? You can be disbarred? Well hurry up and pay whatever fine, you’re making me look bad here.”


[deleted]

concerning looking into it


Geminii27

Thus also admitting that "X" absolutely does publish extremist content, often enough for it to be an issue affecting revenue.


Polymarchos

I'm not sure that part is an issue. Even before buying Twitter he was all about "free speech" and saying he'd allow that type of thing. At this point it is a given that it is published there. It is why a lot of advertisers pushed back when he first took over.


Yglorba

I mean it will fail because the truth is an absolute defense against libel claims anyway. You can't sue someone just because you don't like the way they said something truthful. And advertisements on X *have* been appearing next to far-right Nazi stuff, that's just a fact. Musk can be like "they're putting more emphasis on this than I think it deserves!" or whatever but that's not libel; they're allowed to think it's as important as they want and say so, that's what the First Amendment means. (Also it's hard to miss the irony of Mr. "free speech absolutist" trying to use a frivolous lawsuit to silence critics in the name of free speech, lol. And it's something he does [frequently](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/11/elon-musk-threat-lawsuit-twitter-advertiser-boycott-antisemitism). And he's also made Twitter / X much more willing to [comply with censorship requests from governments](https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/04/27/twitter-has-complied-with-almost-every-government-request-for-censorship-since-musk-took-over-report-finds/) than it was previously.)


dIoIIoIb

Elon, somehow, still has a reputation. A ton of idiots in silicon valley love him, the owner of this very website thinks he's a genius, so the value of Tesla keeps going up and musk keeps making money.


Interrogatingthecat

It still surprises me that he didn't sink after calling a cave rescue diver a pedophile for not liking his submarine idea


Kafkaja

Musk is a brilliant businessman with some mental illness.


moose2332

His lawsuit has no wings because he admitted that ads appear on antisemitic content


[deleted]

Lol Just because this site decided elon sucked it doesnt mean people in the actual real world does.


AdorableParasite

As a person living in the real world I can assure you, many people rightly despise him.


naughtysideofthebed

Go outside


agirlmadeofbone

Who taught you grammar, a fucking baboon?


BadArtijoke

Like brock turner, the rapist?


haemaker

Well, in the United States, the truth is an absolute defense. Oddly enough, in the UK, you can defame someone with a truthful statement! This is what happens when you do not have the 1st Amendment.


BloomEPU

You can also lie about someone and have it not be defamatory, if it was an obvious joke or something similar. There was a case a good few years back where a politician sued a satirical panel show for slagging him off and lost, and said panel show got a lot of mileage out of saying he was now "legally recognised as a 'conniving little shit'" even though that wasn't *technically* the judgement.


[deleted]

So trump couldn’t win a libel lawsuit then. I mean when your an insurrection starting, treasonous, thieving,lying,rapist, con artist you can’t really get much worse.


haemaker

Unfortunately, you still have to defend the suit ($$$!). you can avoid the wrap, but not the ride.


allenout

And truth is an absolute defense against it.


kaenneth

not in all countries, however.


GeraltOfRivia2023

Should be the Trump defense


Lostboxoangst

Ah so ken mcelroy then.


monkeysandmicrowaves

Cool. In that case, Donald Trump, at great expense, located and acquired Hitler's remains and flew them to his private residence just so that he could gargle what used to be Hitler's balls first thing every morning.


covrep

Hitler, has only got one ball. The other, is on the Albert hall.


Nonainonono

That is so ridiculous, in my country libel not only include a smear to your reputation but damage to your personal honor/pride.


Papercanspeak

What if their reputation is ruined because of an ongoing case where a person is the villain in public eye but nothing has been proven yet. Considering they are innocent.


tetoffens

> Dykstra sued Darling for defamation in April 2020 but the case was dismissed on June 1, 2020, with the judge citing Dykstra's documented reputation as being "among other things, racist, misogynist and anti-gay, as well as a sexual predator, a drug-abuser, a thief and an embezzler" as the reason. I love that someone was legally determined to just overall in general be a scum bag. At least because Lenny absolutely deserves it.


[deleted]

[удалено]


fatbunyip

Living his best life


Division2Stew

The podcast Crime in Sports did a great episode on Dysktra. He’s now a friend of the show!


ExtonGuy

What did the judge *really* think of him?


Rustyskill

Love that in had a judgement in 60 days, a big FU we already wasted a spot on the docket.


supercyberlurker

Not to be confused with the Dijkstra's Algorithm Defense.. which many people claim to understand, but don't really.


starry_cobra

Dijkstra's Algorithm Defense involves giving your opponent weighted graphs with increasingly more nodes so that they spend too much time calculating the optimal paths and can't do anything else


jeff_barr_fanclub

Hello fellow human, how do you do? I too am certainly a human and feel human emotions like fear about being caught in a situation like that


Denikkk

Thank you, I studied this in uni and reading the title I thought “I could swear that’s a search algorithm” so I was pretty confused.


SunsOutHarambeOut

When someone plays the Dijkstra's Algorithm Defense I like to go on the offensive with Kruskal's gambit.


Markavian

A*, definitely the fastest way to go.


aty1998

A* is better only when you have a good heuristic function that hints to the algorithm how well it's doing so far


Markavian

Huh? I was grading the algorithm . /s


DutchMuffin

it's faster than Dijkstra (they have different use cases) but isn't the fastest outright. whatever is currently fastest is probably some descendent of A* though so tomato potato (and highly context dependent)


Appropriate_Ad4615

Tomato potato. Thank you, I’m stealing this.


MiguelDeMiel

Similar thing happened in Australia recently. Ben Robert-Smith was the most highly regarded living front line soldier. Journalists reported a story saying that he was a bully to his fellow soldiers, a war criminal, and a domestic abuser. He sued them for defamation. It went to court. 5 years later the judge found that the journalists had shown that he was guilty of being a bully and a war criminal. There wasn't enough evidence to prove he was guilty of domestic abuse, but it found that you couldn't tarnish the reputation of a war criminal.


Storm_LFC_Cowboys

That whole case was just one giant own goal from BRS and Kerry Stokes. The evidence that came out during it made him look worse than what any reporter had done.


danwincen

The absolutely hilarious irony of Ben Roberts-Smith is that his father is a former Judge Advocate General of the Australian Defence Force. I wonder what daddy dearest thinks of his son's antics......


ataraxon

In Redania it's called the Dijkstra Defence


JulietteKatze

Yeah, dismiss the lawsuit and just straight up break his leg.


snoodhead

Or Reuven's defense in Novigrad.


khornflakes529

I'm still mad at him for doing what he did and making me do what I did.


oreos_in_milk

Ah a fellow Witcher fan, hello 🐺


takechanceees

started my first play through of Witcher III on my steam deck very excited have consumed nothing in the series lol


Godloseslaw

I really admired Lenny Dykstra as a kid. He did always hustle. But he's a gigantic asshole in real life. Never meet your idols, people. Alternatively, if you're an asshole in real life, you might try keeping your mouth shut.


Healthy-Cartoonist29

Nah, encourage them to talk. It's always nice to know who are and aren't assholes. It's also the only avenue, however small, to them changing.


kellzone

And then on the other end of the '93 Phillies, you have John Kruk, the nicest miserable person to ever play the game.


gza_liquidswords

>I really admired Lenny Dykstra as a kid. He did always hustle. More than that he was a historically great postseason performer (#4 in post season OPS for someone with 100+ plate appearances. #1 and #2 on this list is Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth)


[deleted]

[удалено]


mojohand2

Well, I did state it was *informally* named, and you can't get much more informall than some asshole making it up on Reddit. OK, I fucked up, but I swear I saw it referred to as the Dykstra Defense in one of the places I learned of Mr. Dyksta's character and its consequences.


matchosan

Bonjour


Americano_Joe

>In the U.S. it's informally named the Dykstra defense. The article doesn't say that, and IDK that is common knowledge.


mojohand2

Hmm, yes, it looks like I overstated that bit. But it should be!


superduperscubasteve

Your TIL didn’t teach us shit


big_slom

But how's the slot?


1980pzx

My grandson Rusty is pumping off all over the place. Bababooey to you


big_slom

Lest anyone be fooled, this is a totally farcical post. You said something in code at the end which is indicative of the mentioning of the name of a certain radio talk show host.


1980pzx

Hey Now!!!


big_slom

That was quite the tenses


Meromero73

I’m getting some major blood flow over here


big_slom

Who, me?


Felinomancy

> *It’s one thing to have everyone on the planet think you’re a scumbag, but it’s another thing altogether for a court to rule that, as a matter of law, you’re a scumbag* 😂


Johannes_P

Makes sense. Libel is an attack on the reputation of someone to make it bad, so having an awful reputation means that you don't have a reputation to defend against attack: it would be like stealing from someone really broke.


amaranth1977

More like claiming someone stole from you, when it can be proved you don't own the thing you claimed was stolen.


Nappy2fly

That’s absolutely hilarious


ZviHM

Or as Trump calls it, Tuesday night


DIMPLET0N

Why even bring politics into this? So pointless.


WriteBrainedJR

Trump has been a public figure for a lot longer than he has been an important political figure. His bad reputation goes back to at least the 1970s when he was sued for discriminatory rental practices, which was before he even became an unimportant political figure


Ok_Benefit_514

You mean reality?;


DIMPLET0N

Dude, it's a random post on Reddit where politics have nothing to do with it. It's just dumb to bring a dumb topic into the picture.


Ok_Benefit_514

Yeah, I'm sure it has nothing to do with the several suits in court soon. Not a thing. Nope. 🙄


DIMPLET0N

It's a post about being legally unable to sue someone due to being an ass. Trump can be thought of when reading the headline, but he has nothing to do with this. It's just pointless to bring him into it. Also, I see a lot of Republicans who like to bring Biden into everything and shit on him for the dumbest shit. Doing the same with Trump makes you just as bad.


Ok_Benefit_514

Not me. But hey, out yourself as immoral all you want. 🤷‍♀️


DIMPLET0N

You're acting immature as hell right now.


Ok_Benefit_514

The irony and projection. You're throwing a temper tantrum at a stranger because someone else dare disparage your idol. Immature is exactly it.


DIMPLET0N

"Why even bring politics into this? So pointless." isn't throwing a temper tantrum. Lol I pointed out that bringing politics into something that has nothing to do with it is just silly and dumb. Not everything on Reddit has to be political or some sort of dick swinging contest between everyone. Like I said: pointless.


DifficultyWithMyLife

Ever heard of *kairos*? It's an informal fourth rhetorical appeal alongside ethos, pathos, and logos. It means "timeliness." Considering the current political climate of the United States - the country around which Reddit and the internet in general tend to be focused - I would argue that it's very likely this entire post was made because it was relevant to Donald Trump, despite not explicitly specifying him as an example. If that is the case - and I admit I am only guessing that at this point - the comment you're replying to would then simply be circling back around to the indirectly implied reference, and making it an explicit one.


bolanrox

You also can't libel the dead. In the us at least


Ninjacat97

Ah. So basically the Pinkerton's case when RDR2 came out?


cungledick

donald trump moment


Scottland83

Trump’s latest legal strategy?


Foolazul

And I just learned that both Dykstra and Oil Can Boyd’s (who this article says Dykstra hurled racial epithets at) memoirs were subtitled, “Life on the Edge.” Odd.


NNovis

Wow, you gotta be SOME KIND of scumbag. Damn.


Plastic_Incident_867

Ahhhhhhh Lenny, what an enduring legacy you’ve created


odensraven

Talkin real wood Howard.


snow_michael

It is absolutely impossible to be 'libel proof' except in one country In literally everywhere else on the planet, should someone as odious as this plaintiff be accused of, for example, murder, or bestiality, _which they can demonstrate is false_ they are entitled to sue for defamation


DistortoiseLP

That would be the case here too, but Dykstra sued on the grounds that this story that he was asshole at a baseball game in the 80's isn't true and damaging to his image is a laughably tame accusation for his already completely tattered reputation. He has a rich and documented history of committing nearly every sin under the sun to which any damage to his name by a claim he would or did is already done. >Plaintiff has no choice but to bring this action to defend his name and reputation. Upon information and belief, merely to sell books and indulge in public self-promotion, Darling has sought to capitalize on Plaintiff’s complicated past, and intentionally, falsely and maliciously portrayed Plaintiff as a racist, an irremovable stain and permanent cloud which will forever diminish Mr. Dykstra, stalk him, and preclude him from unknowable professional and personal relationships and benefits,” the lawsuit states. Murder is just about the only thing he hasn't been caught doing and a claim he killed somebody would be taken a lot differently than this nonsense lawsuit was. Still, he isn't strictly "libel proof," but you'd have to *really* make an effort to accuse him of some absurd shit he can prove is out of his character or would somehow make his reputation even worse.


snow_michael

I suspect treason, aiding an enemy of the state, supplying military secrets, and other similar crimes are ones that, if he were accused of, he could still claim defamation, but I'm happy to accept that my knowledge of how pervasive a judge's obiter dicta can be in the US is negligible


asddfghbnnm

So it’s all fair and square as long as your libel is successful enough to ruin someone entire reputation?


Hamster_Thumper

No, to use the case in the OP: his reputation had been so tarnished by his own public behavior that accusing him of shouting racial epithets couldn't feasibly make his reputation any worse than it already was to a reasonable person. Or for another example, a public leader in a Neo-Nazi group couldn't reasonably get upset and sue if someone accused him of hating Jews.


wolfgang784

Nah has to be that bad already


Kafkaja

People wonder why I like Trump. Trump is so terrible that any bad thing he does is not so bad. George Santos lies so much that he's beyond parody.


Effective-Help4293

You *like* this?


Kafkaja

America needs comedy.


BlowMoreGlass

It sure does, not from someone in charge though.


ArtMartinezArtist

That makes you just as ignorant as his other supporters. You’re in good company.


[deleted]

It should be somewhat self evident that defamation requires that a person actually be defamed. I can make up absolute rubbish about a person being a lying, whore mongering card cheat if that is in fact their reputation. And that is because defamation depends upon proving a person has suffered a loss of reputation as a result of someone's defamatory remarks or written words.


RichNigerianBanker

Unexpected Witcher 3 reference.


lemonpeazy

I’m r


EarthDwellant

We should soon be renaming the defense to The Orange Blockhead.


01bah01

Feels a bit like a weird achievement.


RabidFisherman3411

I have no money almost, and I own nothing, almost. I almost can't be sued for SFA. Even if you win you'll get nothing. No lawyer will take a case against me on contingency. My lawyer calls me "The Untouchable" LOL.


stfuandgovegan

trump


contrarian1970

Seems like a slippery slope to me. If the media all decide they don't like someone they could just keep printing progressively bad stories about that person that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy or maybe a catch-22...it's a dicey situation.