Nick Sandmann $275 million libel suit against NBC to proceed
A judge has now ruled that the $275 million libel suit against NBC filed by Covington teen-ager Nick Sandmann can move forward.
A federal judge ruled Thursday that Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann’s $275 million lawsuit against NBCUniversal may proceed on limited grounds, as he had with similar cases against The Washington Post and CNN.
U.S. District Court Judge William Bertelsman dismissed parts of the lawsuit while allowing discovery on allegations that the network’s coverage defamed the teen by reporting that he “blocked” Native American elder Nathan Phillips in a Jan. 18 encounter at the Lincoln Memorial.
…”As predicted, today Judge Bertelsman entered an order allowing the Nicholas Sandmann case against NBCUniversal to proceed to discovery just as he had earlier ruled with respect to WaPo & CNN cases. Huge, huge win!” tweeted Sandmann attorney L. Lin Wood.
Both the Post and NBC are very exposed here, especially when these lawsuits go before Kentucky juries. My big fear is that Sandmann’s lawyer will settle too easily, as these corrupt news organizations need to be slapped down hard for their routine effort to slander anyone on the right or even innocent who happens to do anything that appears to oppose the agenda of the Democratic Party or the left (I repeat myself).
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A judge has now ruled that the $275 million libel suit against NBC filed by Covington teen-ager Nick Sandmann can move forward.
A federal judge ruled Thursday that Covington Catholic student Nicholas Sandmann’s $275 million lawsuit against NBCUniversal may proceed on limited grounds, as he had with similar cases against The Washington Post and CNN.
U.S. District Court Judge William Bertelsman dismissed parts of the lawsuit while allowing discovery on allegations that the network’s coverage defamed the teen by reporting that he “blocked” Native American elder Nathan Phillips in a Jan. 18 encounter at the Lincoln Memorial.
…”As predicted, today Judge Bertelsman entered an order allowing the Nicholas Sandmann case against NBCUniversal to proceed to discovery just as he had earlier ruled with respect to WaPo & CNN cases. Huge, huge win!” tweeted Sandmann attorney L. Lin Wood.
Both the Post and NBC are very exposed here, especially when these lawsuits go before Kentucky juries. My big fear is that Sandmann’s lawyer will settle too easily, as these corrupt news organizations need to be slapped down hard for their routine effort to slander anyone on the right or even innocent who happens to do anything that appears to oppose the agenda of the Democratic Party or the left (I repeat myself).
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Mr. Z.,
Anything is possible, but I’m doubting Wood will settle “too easily.” The Richard Jewel case had a huge impact on him.
Inside the Legal Profession:
A Conversation with Lin Wood
Mercer Law School 2016
https://youtu.be/QCB501FNt5M
59:31
For a very thorough discussion of the Sandmann Case; see the interview with him on Life Liberty & Levin a few months ago, although YouTube has it buried somewhere I can’t readily locate
“Nick Sandmann: The Truth in 15 Minutes”
Linwood Pc
February 2019
https://youtu.be/lSkpPaiUF8s
13:58
“The mainstream media, politicians, church officials, commentators, & celebrities rushed to judgment to wrongfully condemn, threaten, disparage & vilify Nick Sandmann based solely on a few seconds of an out-of-context video clip. It only takes 15 minutes to learn the truth. Here it is.”
Been a bunch of school kids killed or wounded by idiots with guns in recent years.
Any of them (or their families) collect 525 million bucks for the “insults” they suffered?
Shouldn’t they? We’re talking basic fairness here, right?
mike–
I’ll be flippant and say, “we’re not talking fairness, we’re talking the Law.”
But in all seriousness, it’s lies, libel, and slander, with pure absolute malice aforethought, against a minor, by huge corporations, to push a political narrative.
(Prior to NYT Vs. Sullivan, newspapers/publishers were always on the hook for lying, which is why there was less of it in general, and infinitely more use of qualifiers such as “alleged.”
Reference; school kids killed or wounded by idiots— those are wrongful-death Civil actions, but none of the shooters ever has any assets to go after. (And the only one I can think of who did have assets, was the Los Vegas shooter, and they buried that entire case hook line and sinker.
Keynote Speaker: Prof. Richard Epstein
“The First Amendment in Contemporary Society.”
Federalist Society March 2017
https://youtu.be/49V4J3H0DhE
42:42
“The theme of this talk is what happens if we think about freedom of speech as an ideal, without any of the standard constitutional glosses—strict scrutiny, purposive interpretations—and then how does it play out. It does differ from the current law, quite radically on some key question that lie at the border line between tortious actions and free speech: offensive behavior, intentional infliction of emotional distress, defamation, deceit, coercion and the like. The answers sometimes overlap and sometimes differ, and I hope to explain why the common law approach is superior.”
mike shupp:
You are creating a false equality here with your argument. “Fairness” is not the issue here, its Constitutionally guaranteed Rights and them not being erased by anyone who has a political agenda and is chasing their preferred political narrative to do so and defaming a convenient individual is the issue here. And that convenient person just happens to be a child. How nice of them.
If I were to accuse you of beating your wife and broadcast that to the world and I have no evidence of such actions by you and you were totally innocent. 1. Would that bother you? And 2. How would you set out to prove that “News” was false and a lie? How would you establish that you did not do that?
And, if your only metric for “Fairness” is monetary recompense then the murdered innocent children have a very long way to go for any measure of “Fairness”. Wouldn’t you agree? They are dead, they personally have been once removed from the equation. For ever!
Does everything boil down to financial recompense in your world? The murdering of innocent children and the Constitutionally guaranteed Capital “R” RIGHTS of free speech and the Right to freely assemble and all the rest and a monitary reward for have no equity. Those children have now been denied ALL of their rights by someones random insane actions.
There can though be some financial compensation be arrived at between insurance companies or whom ever for a family’s or a spouses loss related to a mudered individual or even a mass murder like happened on 9-11. And that is the business of somehow compensating someone for their loss. But that is more a first world solution to this particualr issue. In reality once you are dead you are dead and there are no real compensations to be had, no equality.
Your lack of appreciation and basic understanding of the Constitution and how important it is to you personally and every other American needs to be remedied. Why? Because in not really understand what the Constitution is means that you will be willing at some point to negotiate away those essential concepts in it that guarantee everyones Freedom and Liberty. And that result of your not properly understanding is not acceptable to me and many others in this country anyway.
Have too much Freedom and Liberty Mike?
See Hong Kong: https://youtu.be/Fi-bvob2yYE
I particulary appreciate the title of the video: “Hong Kong protesters ‘fighting for freedoms afforded by colonialism”.
Colonialism oppressed them and was a Western concept of dominance forced on the people of Hong Kong by the British, and now the people are fighting for their freedom that the Colonialism ultimately brought to them in their oppression that the Chinese want to take away from them. Do you appreciate the irony Mike?
The one issue that will send todays political warfare into outer space and cause the Liberal now Leftist Democrat party leadership into a super nuclear meltdown?
https://dailycaller.com/2019/11/23/ruth-bader-ginsburg-hospitalized/
This one and surely approaching, talking about death issue, will drive the political conversation into a 24/7 screaming match of desperation. And it will be good.
Things are as they should be for this is where the Constitution has delivered us all to.
New York Times Company v. Sullivan
-audio & text transcript
January 6 & 7th, 1964
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1963/39
somebody call me a Doctor….
“Dr. Trump”
Louder with Crowder
https://youtu.be/aQgMQCjfkKA
3:13
Wayne:
Somewhat off-topic: Do you like also Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a leading libertarian thinker?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYG6s4xc8Kg&t=1720s
“Does everything boil down to financial recompense in your world? “
You conservative folks are the ones hollering for TV networks and newspapers to pay out millions of bucks.
Mike, you just do not get it.
The two examples are not at all equal or the same.
“Any of them (or their families) collect 525 million bucks for the “insults” they suffered? Shouldn’t they? We’re talking basic fairness here, right?”
I would think that most all of the families of those murdered children or other victims have been well compensated, through their insurance companies and / or the municipalities or other associated insurance companies.
And still the Rights enumerated in the Constitution stand on their own and are essential to our country. What is your freedom in all of the forms that is exists worth to you? Priceless I would think.
Your argument is not an apples to apples argument.
The large payouts are the only way to get the boards to rein in the broadcasters. Only once share prices are shellacked by payouts and the corporations are put on notice that they ARE liable for the content they air will the boards change tacks.
mike shupp asked: “Any of them (or their families) collect 525 million bucks for the “insults” they suffered? Shouldn’t they? We’re talking basic fairness here, right?”
What “insults” did they suffer from the news media? Are the families or the dead children going to be stigmatized for the rest of their lives? Did the news media tell blatant, malicious, obvious lies about those children? Should they really be allowed to collect 525 million bucks from a news media that was fair and accurate to their stories?
Is basic fairness that the news media get away with destroying lives of children just because they do not agree with those childrens’ opinions? Is that what basic fairness is supposed to be, these days?
Is basic fairness the violation of the First Amendment, through intimidation and fear, for those that the news media disagree with? Doesn’t that remind us of fascism and its tactics to shut up any opposition? Why should the news media be allowed to spread false accusations despite the obviousness of their falsity?
Cancel culture: the ugly practice of destroying people every time they say something leftists don’t like.
The media destroying lives goes beyond disagreeing with what someone says. They can be careless in how they report the news. The news media was able to destroy the life of Richard Jewell, the hero of the 1996 Olympics, moving into the house literally across the street from where he lived so that they could hound him day and night about a crime that someone else committed yet that he greatly mitigated. Are we really willing to let them destroy anyone’s life just because they choose to do so, or do we want justice for their victims?
Nick Sandmann has a legal recourse. Jewell did not. Isn’t this a basic fairness that is lacking in this country?
William Kennedy Smith was falsely accused of a rape that was not even committed (does this remind you of Brett Kavanaugh?). The press, however, were ever too eager to splash his name and face across the country, day after day, but they hid his accuser’s name and covered her face with a blue dot. Blue Dot Girl, Patricia Bowman (I had to look up her name), had fabricated the evidence of rape and Smith was acquitted, but his name was mud. Three other women piled on, but their cases were even weaker (similar to Kavanaugh, again).
The terrible reputation follows those who are falsely accused, causing mayhem and financial upheaval. Smith was later falsely accused again, and he had to quit his job in order to fight the false accusation. That case was dismissed without a trial. But these days, the news media advocates that we are supposed to believe a woman when she accuses a man of sexual assault, and that the accused man must prove his innocence. Unless that man is a favored leftist (such as Virginia Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax — who still wants to run for governor).
mike shupp,
You wrote: “You conservative folks are the ones hollering for TV networks and newspapers to pay out millions of bucks.”
How do you propose the news media make these children whole again or to stop destroying innocent lives? After a week of continual headline libel and slander, does a brief apology buried deep in the boring part of the news really do that job?
Since you are not a conservative and do not understand what is fair, your comments would help support a case that it is only conservatives who understand fairness. Perhaps I should work on such a thesis.
After all, was it fair for Ted Kennedy drown a woman while he tried to cover up his accident rather than call police for help? Leftists seem to think so, as they reelected him to the Senate for the four decades of the rest of his life and, to this day, consider him a hero.
mike shupp:
Its not about the money, the money is not the issue. The money is actually irrelevant.
The money is just a vehicle, a medium of exchange. Instead of a firing squad or a literal eye for an eye for an offence, someone who has been injured in some way shape or form is compensated.
And the “Pain” of the means of exchange meted out through our justice system sends the message through out the land and helps to sure up and draw the boundaries and parameters of what is acceptable and what is not. In this case as it relates to someones Right to not be slandered and maligned using the biggest multi billion dollar bull horn in the media.
The money is just a thing of value, a means of exchange. Nick Sandmans Rights, just like your Rights, if you are an American, are non negoitiable.
mike shupp,
Nick Sandmann was, without question, libeled and slandered. The American court and tort system allows him to sue for recompense and – more importantly – for punitive damages to discourage future such evil behavior. His case isn’t even a particularly close call – far more clear-cut, say, than Dr. Michael Mann suing his detractors for the same alleged offenses. That case, interestingly, is widely celebrated by people of your general political ilk.
I, for one, hope Sandmann prevails in all the pending actions. With most billionaires seeming to also be leftists these days (go figure), I like the irony of a new billionaire being created via court verdicts that bankrupt corrupt media outlets even after allowing for a sizable – and thoroughly deserved – contingency fee rake-off by his legal representation.
As to mass shootings, I’m sympathetic to the argument that parties other than the generally impecunious crazed gunmen in question bear some responsibility – quite a bit of it, in fact – for creating the circumstances under which these ghastly events continue to occur.
But I suspect you and I decisively part company on who those other parties are. To people of your political persuasion, the obvious answer always seems to be the NRA and gun manufacturers. I would suggest that a more rational analysis would finger the governments and commercial venues that designate certain facilities “gun-free zones.” 94% of mass shootings since Columbine have occurred in such venues.
I think that level of correlation is pretty much enough to presumptively claim causality as well. Crazed shooters are, indeed, crazy, but they are not stupid. They want to do their evil deeds somewhere where they can:
(1) rack up a big score, and
(2) not face the inconvenience of being killed first by someone else before they can chalk up a high enough body count to be “famous.”
The U.S. constitution grants Americans the right to keep and bear arms. Of the two, the right to bear arms has been the most historically compromised. So-called “gun-free zones,” especially in government venues, are, not to put too fine a point on it, flagrant civil rights violations not substantively different than the de jure Jim Crow segregation of the erstwhile American South. “Gun-free zone” is the modern leftist equivalent of the signs reading “No dogs or Irish” or “No niggers” in less politically correct times.
I’m, personally, of the opinion that such designations should be declared flatly unconstitutional on their faces. Failing that, there is certainly ample evidence in-hand by now to hold venue owners who insist on violating the civil rights of their patrons to an unlimited standard of liability in the event what is now readily predictable carnage comes to pass on their premises.
Cotour–
One little quibble–if your children get killed at school, nobody is writing you a check unless you have life insurance on your children (or you sue the school district and hope)
commodude/ Edward/ Dick
=Good stuff.
Questioner–
I do enjoy Hans Hermann Hoppe, but I personally am not an anarcho-capitalist.
Hoppewave
“Absurdistan” The Music Video
2018
https://youtu.be/8CvbDOJT1ro
4:33
Dr. Jordan Peterson
“Message to the school shooters: past, present and future…”
[Rule #6: Put your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.]
March 2018
https://youtu.be/GYua-3JmnT4
36:39
Wayne:
You could bet that if I had a child in a school, especially today, especially where there was instituted a “No gun” zone policy that was advertized where no responsible person existed within the school where a crazed shooter knew he would be unopposed and he could do as he pleased, there would be a law suit. And I am sure that there are many different avenues that lawyers representing victims of these types of situations have come up with in America to be in some manner compensated.
See: 9-11 compensation fund as an example. In America a way can be found to be compassionate.
My point was really not at all about the money or compensation, and more about attempting to demonstrate or rationally explain to someone the difference between foundational Constitutional Rights and their absolute importance and a legal situation that is about establishing damages for the violation of those absolutely essential Rights.
How do you successfully communicate these concepts to anyone who has no fundamental appreciation for what is being discussed here?
Wayne: I call myself a Paleoconservative. H.H. Hoppe is great. His deep based critics of the cold Beast- the state – is very important. I admire also Paul Gottfried’s deep insights.
Wayne:
Here is great stuff for you. It is about how real conservatism was converted/corrupted by Neocons (=false Conservatives).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aDkQrTmZ1w
“Real” Conservatism goes right along with Real Nationalism.
(You know, the serious no nonsense lilly white German kind)
https://youtu.be/FJ3N_2r6R-o
Wayne:
Paul Gottfried | How in America the Left Conquered the Right (2011)
Great, insightful talk! I learned much from it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdM7OJY1QG4