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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gnuman who wrote (62471)	6/15/1999 7:17:00 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

In any libel suit the Plaintiff has to prove that the statement was false, and that the Plaintiff suffered damage as a result of the false statement. The hard thing to prove in a case involving allegations that libel caused stock prices to go down would be the nexus of causation. How can XYZ corporation prove that false allegations by CobaltBlue on a SI message board caused XYZ stock to go down? Stocks go up and down all day long every day. I'd be amazed if anyone could prove that a casual statement by a dummy had any measurable effect on the price of a stock. Now if I were Michael Burke, on the other hand, and I made false allegations about XYZ corporation, would it be more credible that Michael Burke caused XYZ stock to go down? I still think there would need to be more proof than the fact that Michael Burke is more of an expert in the field than CobaltBlue. If the lawsuit claimed that little green men jumped out of black helicopters and started posting on SI and made the stock go down, then the suit would get thrown out pretty quick, of course.<g> I haven't seen a suit yet that didn't seem just one step above claiming little green men made the stock go down. The suits have a logical fallacy: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. CobaltBlue said bad things about XYZ, and then XYX stock went down. That's interesting, but what does it prove?