ACORN doesn’t loan money. ACORN advocates against predatory lending.
You guys are really grasping at straws. It’s an article of faith to the right that ACORN is a cesspool of corruption and secret power, when called out to actually show some substantive evidence of anything, they come up blank.
One would think ACORN’s attorneys are fully aware of what reciprocal disclosure requirements they face and have duly informed their client of such. ACORN management presumably knows what skeletons are in the closet and what exposure would mean to them.
I can only suppose, absent massive incompetence by upper management, that they feel they are not in much danger else they would not have filed a legal action.
That said you never know I guess. Maybe they are idiots gleefully skipping to their doom.
Their attorneys cannot know what has been going on or have audited anything to know what would bubble to the surface. If upper management isn’t directly linked to any of it it just means they don’t have control of what is really going on.
What is “really going on,” pray tell?
Huh?
The attorneys may not know what skeletons there are but they would advise their clients of what may be in store for them if they go ahead with a legal case.
Upper management may not be personally involved in illicit activity but generally they don’t willingly go for airing their dirty laundry publicly. If for no other reason than upper management is often held accountable for how their company is run even if they did not explicitly partake in shenanigans. The captain goes down with the ship and all that.
As such, if there was a real risk of something Bad[sup]tm[/sup] happening to them by pursuing a court case against the film makers one would assume they wouldn’t do it.
From reading commentary, it appears to me that ACORN has no reasonable assumption of privacy at least in the part of the office where it serves the public. Because it’s a service to the public, it’s not considered private.
One thing that ACORN has claimed is that they’ve suffered damage to their reputation. (You can read the complaint at Scribd here) This means that ACORN’s reputation is an issue to be litigated in the lawsuit. In order to assess any damage to ACORN’s reputation, you have to examine their reputation before this incident. I don’t know anything about Maryland procedure, but usually, this issue gives an opposing litigant pretty broad authority to examine other things affecting the claimant’s reputation – past scandals, other lawsuits, criminal problems, public controversy, etc. This can potentially be an uncomfortable and embarrassing process, and if you have any skeletons in the closet, there’s a significant risk that they’ll come tumbling out. This like even more likely to be true if your opponent in the lawsuit is a well-funded political activist with an axe to grind against you.
One would hope so. If ACORN had consulted me, I’d have told them to think long and hard about whether they wanted to open this can of worms.
On an entirely separate note, one thing I find surprising is that ACORN and its two former employees are suing together and are represented by the same law firms. It seems like their interests may not be entirely consistent, since the individuals are complaining that they lost their jobs, and ACORN is the one who fired them.
Huh?
What does my past reputation to do with anything?
Imagine I am a mob boss. Someone accuses me of being a child molester. Now, I may have had a lousy rep before the accusation but the accusation still damages my reputation. Unless the defense can produce evidence I was a child molester in the past (thus not a new revelation and relevant to the defense) I cannot see how my bad reputation as a mobster is relevant at all to me having my rep hurt by accusation of being a child molester.
Sounds like the defense they used to try against women claiming they were raped. “Well, she was a floozy anyway.” :rolleyes:
Just a guess, but I bet Acorn eventually drops the suit; before discovery happens, anyway.
No…if it is already public knowledge that you are a piece of shit then the only reputation you have is a bad one which therefore cannot be damaged. If ACORN is arguing that their sterling reputation was damaged by those meddling kids then it gives the defense the opportunity to argue that their reputation was not so hot to begin with.
I’m with you on this one. I think they will try to scare away anyone trying to look into their dealings and then quietly drop the suit. By that time the scandal will have been forgotten and all everyone will remember is that ACORN sued to protect their reputation.
IANAL but that sounds wrong to me.
Chances are there is someone, somewhere who would call anyone a piece of shit. All a defense has to do to prove they didn’t defame you is find someone who will say you were already a piece of shit therefore have no reputation to defame?
It seems that the defense can say “Hey, you have been involved in many scandals and a large segment of the population thinks you are corrupt.” This is a lot different than having one person say that ACORN is corrupt.
I’m no lawyer either and something about it doesn’t sound right to me either but I just wanted to differentiate between your example and what (I think) TJVM is referring to.
I think this one ran off the rails some time ago, and now everyone is just speculating. Sounds like IMHO is best suited for this, unless it rises later to the status of a Great Debate. Moved to IMHO.
samclem, Moderator, General Questions
If the police or FBI did exactly what the “pimp and ho” did, would it be illegal entrapment?
I think this suit is an extremely bad idea on ACORN’s part.
The defendants will easily be able to build a huge legal defense fund from conservative donors. Liberal groups are stepping back from ACORN, it’s too hot a potato.
ACORN may in fact have been the victim of embesslement, but the fact that two such high level people were involved, and the fact that it went on for so long, and who knows what more damaging documents will appear, will allow the defendants ot paint a picture of ACORN as an ongoing criminal enterprise. Any internal memo which warns of anything, that was not acted on, will help paint this picture. The legal reality almost doesn’t matter, the political reality is that it is all about perception.
The whole lawsuit will be seen as petty and vindictive. ACORN should habe publicly thanked these two for exposing corrupt employees. Instead, they will be seen to be persecuting them.
It’s likely the two defendants are essentially judgement-proof. Though there is some chance that discovery will show some deep pocket conservative group was actually calling the shots.
There was a story in the Washington Post the other day about ACORN’s finances and political activities by affiliated agencies. Apparently their bookkeeping is or was so muddled that they were not able to separate money not to be used for political activity from money that could, and their own internal documents say so.
ACORN will not survive this. There is blood in the water and the sharks are circling.
If you’re seeking recovery for damage to your reputation, you don’t just raise a question of whether your reputation has been damaged, but by how much – a jury or judge will have to assess damages. To use the example someone mentioned above, if you’re falsely accused of child molestation, but you’re a mob boss who already has a reputation for being a vicious murderer, thief, and drug smuggler, the extent of your damages will be a lot less than if you were previously regarded as an upstanding citizen. Thus, your mob-boss activities (and their effect on your reputation) are fair game for discovery, and at trial.
Really, this is no different than other forms of damage. Suppose you sue someone for physically injuring your leg, and you claim that now you can’t walk very well. If it turns out that you were previously in a car accident that injured your leg, and you already couldn’t walk very well, that will greatly affect the extent of your damages from this new injury. It’s the same with damage to reputation: if your reputation was already crap, that’s a relevant consideration in assessing the amount of your damages.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding.
Seems to me there are two questions here.
Were you damaged?
How much were you damaged?
The first question I would think it is not relevant that you are a mob boss (to continue the example). Someone called you a child molester so the court wants to know if it is true or not. If it is untrue you were slandered and thus damaged.
If the court finds you were damaged then they can move to the damage awards. Here it may be relevant you are a creep to begin with thus the damage suffered was not as much as it would be if you were an upstanding citizen.