A Texas attorney filed a $100 million lawsuit claiming he was fired from a law firm because of internet postings accusing him of being a “Nazi” and a “white supremacist.”
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A North Texas attorney who claimed he was fired because of defamatory statements made about him will continue to pursue his lawsuit against the man who allegedly made the statements.
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A Dallas-based investor filed a defamation lawsuit against NPR and a reporter for $57 million in damages based on a story.
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A Texas appellate court sided with a blog and its author, holding that a trial court had wrongly declined to dismiss a defamation claim brought by a school principal and ruling a state free speech law protects the blog posts at issue on the ground they concern matters of public concern involving public officials.
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A man who was in the business of buying and selling cars had difficulty getting the title to a vehicle he purchased in Louisiana, so he hired an Austin, Texas law firm to help. The law firm ultimately sued him over an online review he posted about the company.
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Texas Laywer's Litigator of the week is defense laywer Adam Milasincic, who has used Texas' anti-SLAPP Statute twice this year to defend his clients for speaking out about an animal rights issue. Read more here.
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A judge sided with a student who was sued for leaving a negative review of a law firm online, dismissing the defamation lawsuit and ordering the firm to pay her $26,831.55 in legal fees. The student’s lawyer successfully petitioned the court to have the lawsuit dismissed as a violation of Texas’s law against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP).
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A Texas couple faced a lawsuit filed by their petsitter for $6,766 over a negative Yelp review. After that case was dropped, the petsitter re-filed the suit as a full-on defamation lawsuit seeking up to $1 million in damages. The couple asked the court to throw the entire case out because it should be prohibited by the Texas anti-SLAPP law.
Read MoreIn what appears to be the highest award since Texas‘ anti-SLAPP law was enacted, “Plaintiffs in a “revenge porn” defamation lawsuit must pay $1.3 million in anti-SLAPP sanctions and attorneys’ fees and apologize for filing “baseless” claims in similar lawsuits to punish their critics, a Texas judge ruled.”
Read more about the case from Courthouse News Service here.
Read MoreThe Texas Supreme Court heard arguments Dec. 4 in a case of the first impression pitting Fort Worth-based natural gas drilling company Range Resources Corp. and its subsidiary against fracking opponents.
The companies allege the fracking opponents defamed them through statements and release of a video to the media showing a hose spewing water that was on fire. The fracking opponents sought to have the Range Resources plaintiffs’ defamation claims dismissed based on the Texas Citizen’s Participation Act, also know Texas’ anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) statute.
Read MoreIn 2008, members of the Texas civil rights group Black Citizens for Justice, Law and Order brought neighborhood concerns of racist policies to a public meeting. A member of the group took minutes at the meeting, including allegations of racist police acts and derogatory statements made about a local city council member, and forwarded the minutes to the Congress member for the district.
Read MoreIn November of 2008, a Texas developer sued the author of a book about an eminent domain development agreement he had signed. In addition to naming the book’s author and publisher, a book reviewer and the newspaper that published the book review, the suit also named Law Professor Richard Epstein, who wrote a brief review on the book jacket, lauding the book as a “page turner.”
Read MoreIn perhaps the most well-known SLAPP, Oprah Winfrey was sued in 1996 by Texas cattle ranchers after a show called “Dangerous Food,” in which she invited experts on mad cow disease, and said she wouldn’t eat another hamburger.
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