(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Final Five Lawsuits End in Dismissal Over Defamation Case [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2022-07-27

I just hate his smirking mug

There were five remaining defamation lawsuits before a judge that were filed to assuage the hurt feefees of Nicholas Sandmann who confronted Native American singer and drummer Nathan Phillips at the end of an Indigenous Peoples’ march at the Lincoln Memorial back in 2019 in Washington, DC. Sandmann at the time was a junior in high school at Covington Catholic High in Kentucky. He was in Washington, DC, on a school trip to go to an anti-abortion rally and they happened to intersect with the end of the march (which also had a March for Life going on at the same location). Reports were that students, including Sandmann, mocked the Native Americans and Sandmann filed defamation lawsuits against several media organizations over the perceived injustice done to him.

ABC News coverage, including video of the confrontation between Sandmann, who said he said nothing offensive or derogatory nor did he hear any of his fellow students say anything negative or mocking, and Phillips, who reported that he and the other Indigenous people were mocked by the MAGA hat wearing students.

CNN settled with confidential (and unreleased) terms in the 250 million dollar lawsuit against the news companies.

The Washington Post also settled, again without terms being released.

The Daily Mail reported that NBC settled.

Now, the Daily Beast and policetribune.com/... report that his final five lawsuits — against The New York Times, CBS News, ABC News, Gannett and Rolling Stone magazine, have been dismissed because the judge ruled that the media reported what Phillips said, which was protected since they didn’t change what he said.

I have no idea what amount of money he received from the various companies that settled — no doubt in my mind the news media figured it was cheaper to settle and move on than to get dragged into court by this person and his family and lawyers, but I applaud that the final five were able to get the lawsuits dismissed. There may be differences in how the various entities reporting varied, and maybe the ones that settled stepped closer to the line, but this was something that infuriated me when I heard about it and saw the video and the smile from the kid who would soon be rich.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/27/2113038/-Final-Five-Lawsuits-End-in-Dismissal-Over-Defamation-Case

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.