“You are another one with that delusion.”
I can't agree with 'delusion'. Yes, I'm very well aware that, as drafted in letter, it only pertains to government issues. I'm saying that in spirit, it's supposed to be an important issue to us, and in spirit, we'd like to believe that whilst you have every right to speak freely—so do I. Do we not tell ourselves and others, even on these very SI threads, "Well, it's your right to say so…"? Certainly, actual letter of the law and 'spirit' can be different things. Guys in big black robes spend years arguing about this stuff. Is the gist of what I'm saying really incorrect, though? Free speech is as important, citizen-to-citizen as it is government-to-citizen. Isn't that what we attempt to practice daily?
Addressing the private property issue you brought up—whose private property? Who owns the Internet? Who owns Webnode? On whose private property was I speaking whereby 'they' are welcome to abridge the spirit of free speech? Strictly speaking, maybe the Webnode servers, where the material resides? That certainly isn't Business Wire's private property. And the intellectual property, which Webnode authored—the words, the text—certainly are Webnode's private property. The issues we spoke of were of public interest, of public importance, spoken on the public internet.
Re: Cases Without Merit. What I was really saying—and this was referring to law in general, without any reference to the BW case whatsoever—is that under FRCP 11, defendant would only get back legal expenditures, not unlike a SLAPP recovery. I simply ask, "Is that equitable?" In a case which has merit, the defendant faces an attorney who was hired to ensure that appropriate legal remedies are applied for the infractions in question. In a case of dubious merit, seeking to bury the defendant in litigation costs (this was, after all, the original topic), the attorney was hired to essentially wreck the person who dared to speak his mind. You have a situation where a prudent attorney would not be under the illusion that he could win on legal merit itself, yet takes the case anyway. No actual punitive measure is taken against this—only a SLAPP-like recovery of defendant's legal expenditures (as it was explained to me, at least). So, as was my original point, 'law' and 'justice' are not quite the same, are they?
I didn't completely understand your last few sentences:
“…very few cases are really frivolous. After all, judges are also lawyers, and they don't want to shit in the pool they will be back in if the electorate turns them out of office.”
It appears to say that a prudent judge makes himself aware of future consequences. Thus, whether a case is warranted or not, doesn't necessarily depend upon a legal defintion. Rather it depends upon what he feels the ramifications of such a ruling may have on his future. Did I interpret the message incorrectly? |
