http://www.alternet.org/story/24293/
Free Speech: Going, Going ...
By Molly Ivins, AlterNet. Posted August 19, 2005.
Corporations' efforts to curb free speech through lawsuits are
unfortunately succeeding.
Eternal vigilance is the price of ... um, well, guess we can't say
that anymore. We might get sued.
Mostly when we think of threats to free speech, it's government
actions or laws we have in mind -- the usual bizarre stuff like
veggie libel laws or attempts to keep government actions or meetings
secret from the public.
Sometimes you get a political case, like then-Gov. George W. Bush's
effort to stop a Bush-parody site on the Internet. The parody, run by
a 29-year-old computer programmer in Boston named Zack Exley, annoyed
Bush so much that he called Exley a garbageman and said, There
ought to be limits to freedom. (That's not a parody -- he actually
said that.)
Bush's lawyers warned Exley that he faced a lawsuit. Then they filed
a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission demanding that
Exley be forced to register his parody site with the FEC and have it
regulated as a political committee.
This fits in with the four instances in which faculty members at the
Bush School of Government and Public Service in our fair state were
reprimanded at the behest of Bush associates for saying
less-than-glowing things about our then-governor.
But this is petty stuff compared to corporate efforts to curb free speech.
SLAPP suits (for strategic lawsuits against public participation)
are a serious menace to free speech. The latest example is a real
prize: The Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, has
already spent $10 million defending itself against a lawsuit filed by
Isuzu Motors Ltd. because, eight years earlier, Consumer Reports
rated the Isuzu Trooper not acceptable for safety reasons. And the
case has not yet reached trial.
And that is the real menace of SLAPP suits. It's not that
corporations win them, but that they cost critics so much money that
the critics are silenced -- and so is everyone else who even thinks
about raising some question about a corporate product or practice.
Isuzu claims that CU's reports are not scientific or credible, but
the company's internal memos state that the lawsuit is a PR tool
and when attacked, CU will probably shut up. According to a study
by two University of Denver law professors, Americans by the
thousands are being sued, simply for exercising the right to speak
out on public issues, such as health and safety.
New York Supreme Court Judge J. Nicholas Cobella told PR Watch in
Madison, Wis.: The longer the litigation can be stretched out ...
the closer the SLAPP filer moves to success. Those who lack the
financial resources and emotional stamina to play out the 'game' face
the difficult choice of defaulting despite meritorious defenses or
being brought to their knees to settle. ... Short of a gun to the
head, a greater threat to First Amendment expression can scarcely be
imagined.
PR Watch also quoted George Pring and Penelope Canan, authors of the
1996 book SLAPPs: Getting Sued for Speaking Out.
Initially, we saw such suits as attacks on traditional 'free speech'
and regarded them as just 'intimidation lawsuits,' the two authors
say. As we studied them further, an even more significant linkage
emerged: The defendants had been speaking out in government hearings,
to government officials or about government actions. ... This was not
just free speech under attack. It was that other and older and even
more central part of our Constitution: the right to petition
government for redress of grievances, the 'Petition Clause' of the
First Amendment.
Some examples of SLAPP suits from PR Watch:
* In Las Vegas, a local doctor was sued for his allegation that a
city hospital violated the state's cost-containment law.
* In Baltimore, members of a community group faced a $252 million
lawsuit after circulating a letter questioning the property-buying
practices of a local housing developer.
* In West Virginia, an environmental activist was sued for $200,000
for criticizing a coal-mining company for activities that were
poisoning a local river.
* In Pennsylvania, a farmer was sued after testifying to his township
supervisors that a low-flying helicopter owned by a local landfill
operator caused a stampede that killed several of his cows.
* In Washington state, a homeowner found that she couldn't get a
mortgage because her real-estate company had failed to pay taxes owed
on her house. She uncovered hundreds of similar cases, and the
company was forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back
taxes. In retaliation, it sued the woman for slander and dragged her
through six years of legal harassment before a jury found her
innocent.
* In Missouri, a high-school English teacher was sued for $1 million
after complaining to a weekly newspaper that an incinerator burning
hospital waste was a health
