Actress Lindsay Lohan and her mother Dina filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News, Sean Hannity, and Hannity’s guest commentator Michelle Fields on February 2 over allegations that the mother and daughter did cocaine together.

The alleged statements occurred on a February 4, 2014 Hannity episode where Fields and Hannity discussed celebrity drug overdoses. Fields can be heard saying, “Lindsay Lohan is doing cocaine with her mother.”

Mediaite.com has a clip of the segment, which you can view here.

The Lohans are seeking compensatory and punitive damages and “will continue to suffer severe mental and emotional distress; embarrassment and humiliation; pain and suffering; and economic loss, including loss of income, entertainment and acting contracts, present and future diminished income and economic opportunities,” according to E!.

Moreover, E! further reports that a Fox News spokesperson issued a statement saying, “We will defend this case to the fullest. The remark about which Lindsay and Dina Lohan complain was made on live television by a guest nearly a year ago. We removed the segment from our archives altogether last February and also apologized on-air. At that time, the Lohans did not make any demands for money, and we are surprised they are doing so now.”

A big issue in the case will likely surround when Fox News took down the segment. Nevertheless, I want to talk about a more elementary, and arguably more interesting, area of defamation law that will have an immediate effect on the case’s outcome.

In slander cases, the first question that needs to be asked is if the statement is true or false. If the statement is true here, then Lohan’s case will not succeed.

If the statement is false, victory or defeat in slander cases comes down to various burdens of proof that a potential plaintiff needs to prove. Burdens of proof in a slander case vary depending on whether the plaintiff is a private citizen or public figure. Since the younger Lohan is a global celebrity, she will likely qualify as a public figure, and in particular a general purpose public figure. Being a general purpose public figure, she will have to prove that Fields’ statement was made with knowledge that the statement was false or that Fields said the statement with a reckless disregard to the statement’s falsity. In other words, Lohan will have to prove that Fields made the statement with actual malice.

Lohan’s mother may classify as a different type of public figure, that is, a limited purpose public figure. A limited purpose public figure is someone who is a private citizen who thrusts herself into a public controversy. Limited purpose public figure must also prove that a defamatory statement was made with actual malice. Nevertheless, an argument can be made that Lohan’s mother is a general purpose public figure because of her Living Lohan fame.

Regardless, given the recent multimillion dollar libel verdict in favor of Jesse Ventura, I doubt that Fox News will want to prolong this issue all the way to trial, despite its statement that it will defend the case to the fullest. I will be surprised if the case is not settled out of court.

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article referred to Lohan’s suit as libel; the suit is one of defamation.

Joseph Perry

Joseph Perry is a graduate of St. John’s University School of Law whose goal is to become a publishing and media law attorney. He has interned at William Morris Endeavor, Rodale, Inc., Columbia University Press, and is currently interning at Hachette Book Group and volunteering at the Media Law Resource Center, which has given him insight into the legal aspects of the publishing and media industries. Contact Joe at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Lindsay Lohan Sues Fox News Over Cocaine Use Statement appeared first on Law Street.

On August 21, 2014, Pulitzer Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid, who designed the stadium for the 2022 World Cup, sued the New York Review of Books and its critic, Martin Filler, for defamation. Hadid claimed that Filler defamed her in his June 5, 2014 article, “The Insolence of Architecture,” in which he reviewed non-party Rowan Moore’s book Why We Build: Desire and Power in Architecture. Hadid asserted that Filler’s following passage defamed her:

“However, despite the numerous horror stories about this coercive exploitation, some big-name practitioners don’t seem moved by the plight of the Emirates’ imported serfs. Andrew Ross, a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University and a member of Gulf Labor, an advocacy group that is seeking to redress this region-wide injustice, earlier this year wrote a chilling New York Times Op-Ed piece. In it he quotes the Iraqi-born, London-based architect Zaha Hadid, who designed the Al Wakrah stadium in Qatar, now being built for the 2022 World Cup. She has unashamedly disavowed any responsibility, let alone concern, for the estimated one thousand laborers who have perished while constructing her project thus far. ‘I have nothing to do with the workers,’ Hadid has claimed. ‘It is not my duty as an architect to look at it.‘”

Hadid contends that Filler defamed her because workers have not begun constructing the stadium, and no workers have died. Moreover, the passage implies that she is indifferent to the workers’ deaths. Architectmagazine.com reports that Hadid’s complaint seeks “a withdrawal of the article from publication, a retraction, unspecified damages from the defendants, full payment of legal fees, and ‘any further relief as justice may require.’”

On August 25, 2014, Filler retracted his statement in a letter to the editor entitled, An Apology to Zaha Hadid, which is also added to the end of the review online. The Los Angeles Times reports that Hadid’s legal team received Filler’s retraction but has yet to respond.

Although Hadid obtained Filler’s retraction, it may be difficult for the architect to receive any other relief that she seeks in her complaint if her lawsuit reaches the trial stage. Since Hadid is a Pulitzer Prize-winning architect, she will likely be deemed a public figure, and consequently, she has to prove that Filler acted with “actual malice” when he wrote his article, which is a difficult standard to prove, as explained in this post about celebrity defamation suits.

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Joseph Perry (@jperry325) is a 3L at St. John’s University whose goal is to become a publishing media law attorney. He has interned at William Morris Endeavor, Rodale, Inc., Columbia University Press, and is currently interning at Hachette Book Group and the Media Law Resource Center, which has given him insight into the legal aspects of the publishing and media industries.

Featured Image Courtesy of [Phil Gyford via Flickr]

Joseph Perry

Joseph Perry is a graduate of St. John’s University School of Law whose goal is to become a publishing and media law attorney. He has interned at William Morris Endeavor, Rodale, Inc., Columbia University Press, and is currently interning at Hachette Book Group and volunteering at the Media Law Resource Center, which has given him insight into the legal aspects of the publishing and media industries. Contact Joe at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post New York Review of Books Retracts Defamation Error appeared first on Law Street.