Listen for yourself to the oral arguments in the most recent Ted Rall v. Los Angeles Times anti-SLAPP hearing. I’m defending myself against Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong and the LA Times’ defamation as a favor to the LAPD.
Here’s the Audio of the recent Oral Arguments in Ted Rall v. Los Angeles Times
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Can the LA Times attorney be so dense as to not understand the judge’s hypothetical?
That if an investigation was so terribly flawed, that Ted was unable to respond because he could not be reached by telephone (when for years Ted was reached repeatedly by an editor in order to make changes) that the flawed investigation was sufficient and complete enough to be valid, in order to meet the requirements of the LAT corporate employees manual.
I think she dared not consider that Ted could have a valid case, even under any hypothetical condition, and so declined to respond to the judge’s hypothetical by faking incomprehension.
I say her answer had to be yes, in agreement with the hypothetical, but she preferred to play stupid rather than say so.
Her defensiveness reveals a vulnerability.
I think the LA Times attorney was paid to pretend not to understand. The question was technical but clear. The Times claimed their two articles were merely reporting on what official police records (never mind here that they weren’t official at all) said. The justice asked, what about the part of the articles that had nothing to do with the LAPD records, but discussed the pseudo investigation conducted by the LA Times? Was that privileged too?
Yes, agreed, she had to play dumb rather than accept what was plainly true: the answer is that the LA Times stuff isn’t privileged under the anti-SLAPP statute because the LA Times isn’t a government agency…even though it was owned by one at the time.
Attorneys never play dumb. Part of the strategy.
Muddy waters.
Why do you always assume the world is fair and isn’t rigged for the house? That everyone has morals and live lives of equality and fraternity?
It’s a shitty place where people trade their own children for drugs. Where people fuck Cats to death.
In this case, it isn’t even that vile, simply a business decision nothing more. Another Tuesday.
Haven’t you already lost two previous legal battles? I can’t recall exactly what Wikipedia had on offer..
“Elliot: Oh, I don’t know. Is it that we collectively thought Steve Jobs was a great man, even when we knew he made billions off the backs of children? Or maybe it’s that it feels like all our heroes are counterfeit? The world itself’s just one big hoax. Spamming each other with our running commentary of bullshit, masquerading as insight, our social media faking as intimacy. Or is it that we voted for this? Not with our rigged elections, but with our things, our property, our money. I’m not saying anything new. We all know why we do this, not because Hunger Games books makes us happy, but because we wanna be sedated. Because it’s painful not to pretend, because we’re cowards. Fuck society. “
And we wave patiently as this slowly sinks. Judges do not like to make case law.
In the future, after Rall loses, I want that dipshit who commented on my ADA case (which would have bettered the lives of millions of disabled people had I won and ushered in the now present technological revolution of distance learning two decades earlier) that you will always be a moron and small children will point at you while farting and laughing.
Sorry Ted you bit off more than the state will allow you to chew.
Gotta ask, if you have enough Benjamins to afford this case, why resort to cyberbegging for a laptop just the year before? Isn’t that kind of scammy, like those Jersey faux homeless crew?
[…] argued before the Second District Court of Appeal earlier this month. Audio of the oral argument is posted here. Ted wrote an article about the appellate argument here. From that […]
Just to dash off a quick point before I start the evening’s drinking …
I think it’s in “The Pelican Brief.” It may be in one of the many other John Grisham novels, but there’s a scene where (IIRC) one of the main characters is flashing back to a time with his father several years earlier. The father observes a billboard for a personal injury attorney and laments what it means for the practice of law because he sees it for what it is: lawyers will no longer stop in the middle of typing up a brief to look up a word in the OED and consider the roots of that word in the original Greek. The law will stop being “the law” and it will simply become another mechanism for making lots of money.
I cannot state any of this with “certainty.” But I can state what it clearly looks like. The LATimes lawyer is not interested in Greek roots, in “the law” or any of the rest of it. She is interested in making money. (I have no problem with people who want to make money; I want to make money. I love money. But there are things I will not do to make money. Even when I was young and not too bad looking, there were things I would not do to make money.)
As she is interested in making money, she does whatever–as it is now called–is in the “best interests” of her client. She’s never going to admit that the LATimes is owned by the LAPD. She’s never going to admit that she’s playing dumb because she can’t do otherwise. Look: cut it down to its basics.
1. Ted got fired based on a copy of a tape recording.
2 ANYONE–and I’m one of the anyones–who listens to that tape copy will say the same thing I’m saying: it’s completely indecipherable. It’s almost totally static and garble. I may not be a lawyer, but I know what a bad frame-up looks like. If I were Ted’s lawyer, I’d call the other side’s lawyer and ask her to decipher a randomly selected 10-second segment of the tape. “We’ll play this portion. Please tell us what’s being said.” And I’d force her to do that until the entire copy had been played out in random 10-second segments.
3. This is so obviously not about anything even remotely connected to journalism, law, fair play, or ethics, it sickens me all the way down to the core to contemplate the enormity (and I use the word correctly) of what it means. This is Russian gulag/Nazi court/McCarthy hearing obscene. I’ll feel very bad for Ted if they shaft him on this, but I will also be absolutely scared shitless to contemplate the sort of country we have in that scenario.
As before, I really wish you the best luck, Ted.