She waited seven months to do this, so obviously she’s given some thought to it. Or maybe she wanted to give Breitbart a chance to apologize, or in some way acknowledge the harm his irresponsible actions did to her, professionally and personally, or maybe at least take the defamatory video off his site, but to date he has done none of those things:
Sherrod, currently unemployed and living in her home town of Albany, Ga., said Breitbart has never apologized and continues to slur her character.
The court filing – which names Breitbart, producer Larry O’Connor and a “John Doe” who allegedly provided the entire speech to the blogger – claims Sherrod suffered defamation and emotional distress. The suit asks for Breitbart to remove the edited clip of her speech (which, according to the suit, can still be found on his site), an apology and unspecified damages.
Breitbart was served Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference meeting here in D.C., as first reported in the New York Times. In a statement released by his company, Breitbart said, “I can promise you this: neither I, nor my journalistic websites, will or can be silenced by the institutional Left, which is obviously funding this lawsuit.”
The statement goes on to say that Breitbart “categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech” and is “absolutely confident” of being fully vindicated. The first hearing is scheduled for May 13.
Unfortunately for Breitbart, that bluster may not translate into successfully challenging the allegations contained in the legal complaint, which Doug Mataconis has embedded in a lengthy post analyzing the strength of Sherrod’s lawsuit. Doug pulls out several specific items in the complaint that he feels represent “the meat of Sherrod’s allegations” and concludes thusly:
This is just the opening Complaint, of course, and there’s much more to come as this case makes its way through the Courts. Brietbart will file his response, as will the other Defendants, and discovery will commence, but reading through the Complaint it strikes me as a fairly well-developed defamation claim that is likely to at least survive any preliminary legal challenges.
Perhaps most interesting of all is who is representing Sherrod in this lawsuit:
The complaint is telling for just who Shirley Sherrod’s attorneys are, and it is a very significant point. There are a team of four attorneys at the DC office of Kirkland & Ellis, Thomas Clare, Michael Jones and Beth Williams with the lead being one Thomas D. Yannucci. And who is Tom Yannucci? Glad you asked. He is, if not the preeminent, one of the most preeminent plaintiffs defamation attorneys in the United States. From a September/October 2000 Columbia Journalism Review article:
In-house lawyers at top news organizations describe him as “extremely aggressive,” “very effective,” a straight shooter, and someone who, more than any other plaintiffs’ lawyer, “strikes fear in news organizations’ hearts.”
It is not hyperbole. Yannucci is the attorney who embarrassed and gutted NBC’s Dateline on the fraudulent GM exploding gas tank story and who obtained a page one above the fold retraction from Gannett Newspapers and the Cincinnati Enquirer, and reportedly $18 million dollars, in the Chiquita Brands story.
In other words, not the kind of attorney who would take on a case he didn’t think had a pretty good chance of succeeding.
Doug’s piece comes via Mark Thompson at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, whose views on the odds of Sherrod winning a defamation lawsuit against Breitbart have changed significantly:
As some will recall, this past summer I argued that Shirley Sherrod would be ill-advised to file suit against Andrew Breitbart for defamation, largely on the grounds that, wherever my sympathies may lie, “her suit is extraordinarily unlikely to succeed.” Yesterday, Ms. Sherrod filed that suit in the District of Columbia Superior Court. Having now reviewed some of the concrete allegations in her complaint and some other important factors, I’d like to walk that original assessment back a few miles. I have no idea how this case is ultimately going to play out, but Breitbart’s going to have a far tougher road to hoe on this than I anticipated.
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