Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?! Not Brian Gorrell!!

I was away from blogging for a couple of days. Before I left however, I saw a ping on my dashboard about the Warrior Lawyer who mis-informed his readers about our blog being a nest of harsh comments about certain individuals of the Gucci Gang. That was fine, cause I had time to respond to him/her – - but he/she simply ignored my correction to his/her blog because she didn’t have a leg to stand on.

Then came another blogger who blogged about filing libel suits against people who’ve blogged, mentioned, tagged the names of the people involved in the Talented Mr. Montano blog. It’s quite a wonder how they could generalize laws across the globe like that without really researching the facts. The comments of HIS supporters as well show that they are simply siding WITH the blogger, without doing research of their own.

It was actually fun reading Wikipedia on their entries about Libel, Truth, and Defense. Here are excerpts:

In law, defamation (also called vilification, slander, and libel) is the communication of a statement that makes a false claim, expressively stated or implied to be factual, that may harm the reputation of an individual, business, product, group, government or nation. Most jurisdictions allow legal actions, civil and/or criminal, to deter various kinds of defamation and retaliate against groundless criticism. Related to defamation is public disclosure of private facts arises where one person reveals information which is not of public concern, and the release of which would offend a reasonable person. “Unlike libel or slander, truth is not a defense for invasion of privacy.”

False light laws are “intended primarily to protect the plaintiff’s mental or emotional well-being.”  If a publication of information is false, then a tort of defamation might have occurred. If that communication is not technically false but is still misleading then a tort of false light might have occurred.

Slander and libel

The common law origins of defamation lie in the torts of slander (harmful statement in a transitory form, especially speech) and libel (harmful statement in a fixed medium, especially writing but also a picture, sign, or electronic broadcast), each of which gives a common law right of action.

“Defamation” is the general term used internationally, and is used in this article where it is not necessary to distinguish between “slander” and “libel”. Libel and slander both require publication. The fundamental distinction between libel and slander lies solely in the form in which the defamatory matter is published. If the offending material is published in some fleeting form, as by spoken words or sounds, sign language, gestures and the like, then this is slander. If it is published in more durable form, for example in written words, film, compact disc (CD), DVD, blogging and the like, then it is considered libel.

Criminal defamation

Many nations have criminal penalties for defamation in some situations, and different conditions for determining whether an offense has occurred. ARTICLE 19, Global Campaign for Free Expression, has published global maps  charting the existence of criminal defamation law across the globe. The law is used predominantly to defend political leaders or functionaries of the state. In Britain, the Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta was convicted of criminal libel for denouncing the Italian state agent Ennio Belelli in 1912. While, in Canada, though the law has been applied on only six occasions in the past century, all of those cases involve libellants attached to the state (police officers, judges, prison guards). In the most recent case, Bradley Waugh and Ravin Gill were charged with criminal libel for publicly accusing six prison guards of the racially motivated murder of a black inmate (http://netk.net.au/Canada/Canada15.asp. In Zimbabwe, “insulting the President” is, by statute, (Public Order and Security Act 2001) a criminal offense.

Defenses

Even if a statement is derogatory, there are circumstances in which such statements are permissible in law.

Truth

In many legal systems, adverse public statements about legal citizens presented as fact must be proven false to be defamatory or slanderous/libel. Proving adverse, public character statements to be true is often the best defense against a prosecution for libel and/or defamation. Statements of opinion that cannot be proven true or false will likely need to apply some other kind of defense. The use of the defense of justification has dangers, however; if the defendant libels the plaintiff and then runs the defense of truth and fails, he may be said to have aggravated the harm.

Another important aspect of defamation is the difference between fact and opinion. Statements made as “facts” are frequently actionable defamation. Statements of opinion or pure opinion are not actionable. In order to win damages in a libel case, the plaintiff must first show that the statements were “statements of fact or mixed statements of opinion and fact” and second that these statements were false. Conversely, a typical defense to defamation is that the statements are opinion. One of the major tests to distinguish whether a statement is fact or opinion is whether the statement can be proved true or false in a court of law. If the statement can be proved true or false, then, on that basis, the case will be heard by a jury to determine whether it is true or false. If the statement cannot be proved true or false, the court may dismiss the libel case without it ever going to a jury to find facts in the case.

In some systems, however, notably the Philippines, truth alone is not a defense.  Some U.S. statutes preserve historical common law exceptions to the defense of truth to libel actions. These exceptions were for statements “tending to blacken the memory of one who is dead” or “expose the natural defects of one who is alive.” 

It is also necessary in these cases to show that there is a well-founded public interest in the specific information being widely known, and this may be the case even for public figures. Public interest is generally not “that which the public is interested in,” but rather that which is in the interest of the public.

This is the part that I enjoyed the most:

Other defenses

Defenses to claims of defamation include:

• Truth is an absolute defense in the United States as well as in the common law jurisdictions of Canada. In some other countries it is also necessary to show a benefit to the public good in having the information brought to light.
• Statements made in a good faith and reasonable belief that they were true are generally treated the same as true statements; however, the court may inquire into the reasonableness of the belief. The degree of care expected will vary with the nature of the defendant: an ordinary person might safely rely on a single newspaper report, while the newspaper would be expected to carefully check multiple sources.
• Privilege is a defense when witness testimony, attorneys’ arguments, and judges’ decisions, rulings, and statements made in court, or statements by legislators on the floor of the legislature, or statements made by a person to their spouse, are the cause for the claim. These statements are said to be privileged and cannot be cause for a defamation claim.
• Opinion is a defense recognized in nearly every jurisdiction. If the allegedly defamatory assertion is an expression of opinion rather than a statement of fact, defamation claims usually cannot be brought because opinions are inherently not falsifiable. However, some jurisdictions decline to recognize any legal distinction between fact and opinion. The United States Supreme Court, in particular, has ruled that the First Amendment does not require recognition of an opinion privilege.
• Fair comment on a matter of public interest, statements made with an honest belief in their truth on a matter of public interest (official acts) are defenses to a defamation claim, even if such arguments are logically unsound; if a reasonable person could honestly entertain such an opinion, the statement is protected.
• Consent is an uncommon defense and makes the claim that the claimant consented to the dissemination of the statement.
• Innocent dissemination is a defense available when a defendant had no actual knowledge of the defamatory statement or no reason to believe the statement was defamatory. The defense can be defeated if the lack of knowledge was due to negligence. Thus, a delivery service cannot be held liable for delivering a sealed defamatory letter.
• Claimant is incapable of further defamation–e.g., the claimant’s position in the community is so poor that defamation could not do further damage to the plaintiff. Such a claimant could be said to be “libel-proof,” since in most jurisdictions, actual damage is an essential element for a libel claim.

Now tell me, if we blogged about the interesting occurrence (which is a strange phenomenon) of Brian Gorrell’s blog on how quickly the news spread and how many viewer’s have visited the site since it opened, are we going to be part of the libel suit as well? If we mention the names of Celine Lopez, DJ Montano, Wendy Puyat, Tim Yap, and Tina Tinio as part of the characters on a blog and how these characters (to us they are characters since we don’t really know them) evolve as posts gets added to the blog – do we stand a chance of facing suits in the Philippines?  How?  And why?

What about the truth defense? Since no one has come forward from the characters mentioned to disprove the statements or allegations made by Brian Gorrell, how can it not be considered truth? Read more on the Wikipedia entries here.    Just look at this entry here about TRUTH according to Philippine Law.

What’s more interesting is that there are actual “brains” dissecting the issue, not merely blogging about the subject to obtain traffic. I found this Multiply Journal entry very fascinating. If you want to read it, you have my blessing.

The truth shall set you free. If Brian Gorrell is telling the truth, then it shall set him free. Who among the disciples of the Gucci Gang can come forward and tell THEIR truths?! If they can, we invite them to do so.

Ciao – - and CHORVA CHORVA!!!

« Ellen Degeneres invites Arnel Pineda of Journey, to her show.
Shake your bon bon Ricky Martin!! Caught in the buff… »