Now, of course, Fox News has a first amendment right to lie but does that free them from all civil liability for the consequences of that lie? This guy believed in what Fox News was telling him and hence believed his country was being overthrown, and so he did what any good American should do. He fought back. But he was deceived.
Does the Dominion lawsuit have any bearing on this? The evidence that has been coming out of that suit has been pretty damning that Fox News knew they were lying (at least about Dominion) and were being pretty reckless about the consequences. If Fox News loses the Dominion suit, then would that strength the J6 terrorists winning against Fox News?
On top of that, his so-called position is nonsense. If he kept the TV tuned constantly to that corrupt network, then he cannot know “next to nothing about the election”.
The new serious civil suit against Fox News is from stockholders – their suit claims that repeating lies about the election being stolen, when they knew it wasn’t true, was a violation of their ‘fiduciary duty’ to stockholders.
And if (when) FOX loses the suits by the voting machine companies, that will be additional evidence to be used in these stockholder lawsuits.
This is especially interesting in light of the current case before the Supreme Court attempting to redefine “standing” much more broadly than it has ever been defined. I think the sc has the sense to reject the claims of anti-abortionists that anyone who likes has the standing to sue pro-abortionist causes or companies because if they lack that good sense, then the doors will be wide open. Hell, I could sue Fox just because they piss me off.
I feel like perhaps my question is being misunderstood.
This has nothing to do with the criminal charges. Somebody lied to me so I committed a crime isn’t a defense (maybe there might be some kind of strange edge case).
This is about whether somebody who is being sent to jail (J6 terrorist) on criminal charges can sue the liar (Fox News) based on a reckless disregard for the truth standard for civil damages. Of course, anybody can sue anyone for anything, but would they have a reasonable case and a fair chance of success?
The secondary question is whether the Dominion suit contributes to this at all. Since the standard in the Dominion case is so high, if Dominion wins, then does that open up Fox News to liability?
The tertiary question is whether the police officers injured during J6 might have a case against Fox News (and again in particular if they lose the Dominion case)?
Is that a grounds for civil liability, or is it merely an element of other grounds, such as libel or slander (defamation)? If the latter, it may be an element, but it is not the only element.
Well, that’s the point behind my remark about the case pending before the SC now–what gives any lawsuit a chance to be taken (not dismissed) by a court is “standing,” which threatens to be redefined if the anti-abortion people are considered to have standing to file a lawsuit.
Sorry if this seems a hijack to you, but the very issue of who can sue and who can’t seems to be up in the air just now.
I’m not a lawyer. But I don’t think there’s any circumstances in which you can sue somebody for misleading you into committing a crime. There’s no legal path that leads you to a crime (pretty much by definition).
Let’s say I tell you that somebody in the neighborhood keeps a million dollars hidden under their couch in their living room. You decide a million dollars is a lot of money so you decide to break into the neighbor’s house and steal it. You’ve never committed a crime before but a million dollars was too much for you to resist.
So you break into the neighbor’s house when they’re not home and look under the couch. There’s nothing there but dust bunnies. Turns out I’m full of shit and I made up the story about the money. As you get up to leave the police enter the house; turns out there was a silent alarm.
At your trial, you tell all of this story. You testify that you would never have committed the crime if I hadn’t told you the lie about the million dollars being there. You’re even able to prove all of this in court.
It doesn’t matter. The judge is going to tell you it doesn’t matter what I said. You had no legal right to commit a crime under any circumstances. It doesn’t matter if I lied to you about the million dollars being there. It doesn’t matter if I told you the truth and the million dollars actually was there. And it doesn’t matter if you and I never had any conversations.
And that carries over to any civil suit. You can’t claim that your justification for committing the break in was my telling you the money was there. Because there is no legal justification for breaking in to somebody’s house so whatever I said is immaterial.
What happens if instead of telling you there was a million dollars in the house, I had instead told you that breaking into somebody’s house is legal. And I was really convincing and you believed me. So when you broke into the house (just to look around) you didn’t think you were doing anything illegal.
That’s not going to protect you. Generally speaking, being ignorant of a law is not a defense if you break the law. There are a few exceptions but they’re rare and generally there’s going to be a reasonableness standard. You’ll have to convince a judge that it was reasonable for you to think that what you were doing was legal.
And I don’t see any possibility of McCaughey being able to successfully argue that he was reasonable in his belief that a bunch of rioters storming the Capital was a legal part of the election process.
It is certainly interesting.