I doubt it. It was likely libel. In any case, you can avoid the issue by just calling it defamation.
It seems to me that a reasonable person would expect to hear jokes and comedic routines from a comedian. Whether the comedian said Delta or Helta airlines pissed in the passenger’s coffee, it’s just another joke.
It’s unlikely that a reasonable person would expect a comedian to pause their act, spend a few minutes trashing an airlines, and then resume their comedy act. And it would be next to impossible to prove. It was a joke, your Honor. It wasn’t a funny joke but it was still a joke. They can’t all be knee slappers.
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You can’t generalize to all comedy shows. The question is whether in this particular circumstance it’s reasonable.
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Plenty of comedy acts these days incorporate purportedly factual statements into their acts. Comedy hasn’t just been “jokes” since Lenny Bruce.
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Unless the comedian confesses that they were deliberately trashing the airlines to hurt their business, they can claim it was just another joke. People came to hear a comedian tell jokes and they got what they paid for. I can’t think of a topic that a comedian couldn’t, currently, use in their shtick.
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Things have changed since Lenny Bruce was being arrested. Except for his drug use, I don’t believe anything Bruce used to say would get him arrested today.
It doesn’t matter. The question is whether in the context of the act, a reasonable viewer would tend to believe that it is true. Plenty of comedians these days use extensive biographical information and confessional forms in their acts and it is apparent that they mean at least some portions to be believed as truth. Both Johnny Carson and Garry Shandling were at some point subject to court orders barring them from making jokes about their exes on the basis that it would be an invasion of their privacy. That means the courts determined that whatever they said about their exes was likely to be taken as the truth.
You miss the point entirely. The point isn’t about Lenny Bruce’s arrests for obscenity. The point is that since Lenny Bruce, comedy itself has changed. It is now reasonable in some circumstances to believe that a comic is saying some things that are statements of fact.
Marc Maron’s act, for example is almost 100 percent autobiographical and confessional in form. When he constructs a joke using facts from his life it is absolutely reasonable to believe that most of it is true, for example that until 14 years ago he was a heavy drug user and he has been clean since. Or the things he says about his relationships with his exes. If any of the things he says about them were false statements of fact that harmed the reputation of any of his exes, they would have quite valid claims of defamation against him.
On the other hand, in the documentary film “The Aristocrats,” when Sarah Silverman tells a detailed story about how she was raped as a teenager by New York talk show host Joe Franklin, it’s obvious that she did not intend it to be taken as factual.
It all depends on the specific circumstances of the “joke.”
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It depends on whether slander can be proven in court.
Smelta Airlines attorney - That comedian said bad things about us.
Comedian’s attorney - Your Honor, my client is a comedian. They were telling jokes. People expect them to tell jokes. People pay to hear them tell jokes. That’s how they earn a living. Sometimes the audience laughs, sometimes they don’t. Since the offended party can provide no evidence that a comedian was not simply telling another joke, we request that this case be tossed.
What’s a reasonable juror to believe?
I believe the post you responded t already addressed this exact issue. Maybe you should read it again.
Forgetting about the speaker being a comedian aspect of the question, because the OP has said that part isn’t relevant, can someone (let’s say me) make a bunch of serious, slanderous comments about “Helta” Airlines without fear of being sued for slander by, well let’s call them Telta Airlines?
Read post No. 9.
Reminds me of comedian Mike Birbiglia’s story of his bad experience with “Glamazon.com.” In that case (according to him) he was not trying to avoid libel or slander laws, but abide by a promise to them that he would not use their actual name in his routine.
IANAL, but the biggest questions concern the Sullivan case standards (I know that was a libel case, not a slander case). Even if the comedian had named a real-life airline rather than “Helta,” this would be no slam dunk slander case.
The law gives a lot more room for criticism of or defamation of public figures than of ordinary folks. Is a major corporation like Delta Airlines the equivalent of a public figure? A lawyer can tell us for sure, but the common sense answer is, “Yes!”
Now:
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Did the comedian present demonstrably false assertions as fact? Merely by virtue of his job and his venue, the answer is “Probably not.” An audience EXPECTS exaggeration, if not flat out fiction, in a standup comedy monolgue.
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Did the comedian make seemingly factual assertions he KNEW were not true?
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Did the comedian make his assertions for the purpose of hurting the airline’s reputation? Again, probably not. His primary goal was to get laughs, not to tarnish Delta’s image.
So, there doesn’t look to be much of a case. UNLESS the “comedian” is someone like Jon Stewart, who alternates between flat-out comedy and serious news.
SUPPOSE Jon Stewart stated, "Delta is run by greedy incompetents, and you should stay off their planes, because sooner or later they’re going to have a lot of big crashes and kil thousands of people. Well, he could NOT turn around and say, “Hey, my clown nose was on.”
But if Jerry Seinfeld did one of his long, “What is the DEAL with these Airlines” routines, and made a lot of jokes about absurdly bad experiences on “JetGreen Airlines,” I think he’d be totally safe.
There’s no way to make a blanket statement like this. Some comedy bits will come off as expected exaggerations. Some will come off as claims of fact that serve as a launching pad for humor.
To be precise, the standard is “actual malice” or a “reckless disregard for the truth.” So you don’t necessarily have to show actual knowledge.
Nope, this kind of intent is not an element of defamation. Regardless of whether he intended to harm the airline’s reputation of just intended to make a joke, he could still be liable for defamation.