South Carolina Appeals Court Ruling Outlines Libel Law Principles

My November column for the South Carolina Press Association:

On Nov. 6, a three-judge panel of the South Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed the grant of summary judgment to the former owner of the Charleston City Paper in a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper over two editorial columns about a football team’s pre-game ritual that some considered racist. While the appellate court’s decision is not too surprising, it does illuminate several well-established principles of libel law in South Carolina that should be known by writers, journalists and editors here.

Man Bites Dog: Prosecutor Pays a Price for Chasing Commenters

(cross posted at the Citizen Media Law Project) 

When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news. — attributed to  New York Sun city editor John B. Bogart (1848- 1921)

Unfortunately, it's become an increasingly common occurrence: a public official, outraged over something posted about him/her anonymously on the Internet, asks a court to issue a subpoena to find out the identity of the poster(s). The Legal Threats Database contains a number of examples, and the "Legal Protections for Anonymous Speech" section of the Legal Guide lays out the legal analyses that courts have used to evaluate these subpoenas. 

So it wasn't too surprising when Pittsburg County, Oklahoma District Attorney Jim Bob Miller issued a subpoena to Harold King, operator of the McAlester Watercooler forum site, seeking information, including (oddly) social security numbers, to identify about 35 pseudonymous posters on the site.  But what made the case unusual was that D.A. Miller was one of the individuals who had filed a complaint for criminal defamation (details here) against King with the local police.