If something is not illegal but clearly bad, it's a lesson that we should change the law. It absolutely should not be legal to lob a completely baseless murder accusation at someone with no evidence.
Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?
11–20 of 231 posts
Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Danger, Will Robbins. I have zero expertise; I'm an annoying nerd like most of the rest of us. I just read lots of law blogs. :) The post touches on this: In determining whether the audience is likely to interpret a statement as one of fact or one of opinion or hyperbole, courts consider a viewpoint of an audience familiar with the speaker, the forum, and the circumstances. The interesting thing here --- and this is…
(It's Will Robinson.) This sounds like a Perry Mason episode...either the tarot reading has some kind of observable truth, in which case it is treated as a fact, or it's just made-up nonsense, in which case it is opinion.
Even if it's treated as fact, it has to be false. Has she lied about what cards she saw in the tarot reading?
Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?
#13Saying someone is an idiot is an opinion, there is no standard for this claim to be proven true or false. Saying that someone is a murderer is not an opinion, regardless of how you came to that conclusion, you are making a statement of fact. The US justice model is seriously janky if you can accuse random people of being murderers, ruin their lives, and get away with it. My opinion: whether your 'proof' comes from go…
[deleted]
Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?
#14Saying someone is an idiot is an opinion, there is no standard for this claim to be proven true or false. Saying that someone is a murderer is not an opinion, regardless of how you came to that conclusion, you are making a statement of fact. The US justice model is seriously janky if you can accuse random people of being murderers, ruin their lives, and get away with it. My opinion: whether your 'proof' comes from go…
The US's standard allows for the eventuality of the Crank in the Public Square: it's incumbent upon the general public to understand that the Crank has no particularly good reason to believe the things they believe (and say), and thus aren't worth listening to.
Overall, this results in (arguably) more desirable outcomes: we don't subject Cranks and the legal system to unnecessary interactions with each other, because what the Crank says simply does not matter.
(The equation changes when the Crank does begin to convince other Cranks to hurt or harass their subject. But that's a matter for incitement or other standards, not defamation.)
Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?
#15Fascinating: this is a defamation case that could conceivably turn on the conventional interpretation of specific tarot cards. You can make up a completely batshit but purely subjective reason to accuse someone of a crime, and the "subjective" part insulates you from liability, but if there's a shred of objectivity in the claim to latch onto, and you lied about it, you can be liable.
[dead]
Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?
#16If something is not illegal but clearly bad, it's a lesson that we should change the law. It absolutely should not be legal to lob a completely baseless murder accusation at someone with no evidence.
The law deserves more nuance than that: it's clearly bad that someone can baselessly accuse someone else of murder, but it's not clear that a weaker defamation standard produces better social outcomes overall.
In this particular case: the woman making the baseless claims is pretty clearly mentally ill. Is society best served by her being fined or serving jail time? It's not clear to me that it is.
Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?
#17If something is not illegal but clearly bad, it's a lesson that we should change the law. It absolutely should not be legal to lob a completely baseless murder accusation at someone with no evidence.
Some things that are bad are not so bad that we should make them impossible to do. Just because you might be a jerk to do something, doesn't mean it should be enforceable by armed people with guns. Is it really insufficient (or somehow so difficult) for us to simply dislike people who are jerks rather than try to put them in jail / fine them?
Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?
#18If something is not illegal but clearly bad, it's a lesson that we should change the law. It absolutely should not be legal to lob a completely baseless murder accusation at someone with no evidence.
In this case, you'd need to do more than change the law; you'd need to amend the Constitution.
Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?
#19He claims defamation requires a statement of fact rather than an opinion. This very much depends on the particular jurisdiction. Defamation does extend to opinions, especially unreasonable opinions, in many countries.
[deleted]
Re: Can a Tarot card reading be defamatory?
#20He claims defamation requires a statement of fact rather than an opinion. This very much depends on the particular jurisdiction. Defamation does extend to opinions, especially unreasonable opinions, in many countries.
Other countries are dubiously relevant. This is a US lawyer commenting on a US case.