What are the best vintage, investment-type players in your opinion?

[bk400]

Originally Posted by Lorewalker

Not that I was asked but libel pertains to false statements through written words whereas slander pertains to false statements through spoken word. Legally there are hurdles for both but will leave that to someone who has actually been to law school to explain.

Well, I'll take a crack at it.

In this case, the narrow and semantic question about whether potential defamatory speech is libel or slander is less relevant than whether Mike Trout could win a lawsuit because someone claimed that his teammates hate him.

Basically, the question hinges on whether (1) Mike Trout is considered a public figure (and how "public" he is) and, if so, (2) whether the speaker knew his statement was false or was reckless with regard to the statement's veracity.

I am not a defamation law expert, but in this case, I suspect it is very unlikely that Mike Trout would win a defamation case. As a very high profile professional athlete, he is a public figure in a layman's sense. And even though he is not a public official (the Supreme Court was most concerned with the freedom of the press to write liberally about public officials), he has broad access to the press, which is viewed as important because it means that he is likely to have a platform with which to defend himself against or refute the claim that his teammates hate him. This makes it extremely likely (perhaps even legally settled -- a defamation law expert could tell us) that a court would find that Mike Trout is a public figure with respect to comments regarding his role as a baseball player (and perhaps even comments that are unrelated to his role as a baseball player).

If Mike Trout is deemed a public figure, then you'd have to prove that the speaker's comment that Mike Trout's teammates hate him was made with reckless disregard for its veracity. And this would practically be an impossible standard to reach as any fan or talking head can have an opinion about how a star player is viewed by his teammates. See, for instance, all the people who claim that Aaron Rodgers is hated by his Jets teammates.

Happy to have my summary challenged by a currently practicing attorney.

[GeoPoto]

I don't think Greg meant to opine that Trout had a case, per se. The question for a lawyer here (focusing on the semantics) would appear to be whether typing verbiage into a public "chat room" like Net54 is considered written or spoken "speech".

If chat rooms have displaced town gatherings as common forums for public discourse, it seems logical that laws regarding spoken speech might be deemed applicable in lieu of laws regarding written speech, such as newspapers and other "published" material.

[bk400]

Originally Posted by GeoPoto

I don't think Greg meant to opine that Trout had a case, per se. The question for a lawyer here (focusing on the semantics) would appear to be whether typing verbiage into a public "chat room" like Net54 is considered written or spoken "speech".

If chat rooms have displaced town gatherings as common forums for public discourse, it seems logical that laws regarding spoken speech might be deemed applicable in lieu of laws regarding written speech, such as newspapers and other "published" material.

Libel = written and Slander = spoken, at least in the state where I have since retired from the practice of law.

Damages awarded under successful defamation claims are often a function of the number of people exposed to the defamatory speech. Whether that speech is libelous (written) or slanderous (spoken) is less important than how many people read or heard that speech -- and whether that speech is permanent.

To that end, messages posted in a chat forum such as this one (which appear to be searchable on the internet forever) would likely be considered written speech. But I defer to someone whose legal experience is more recent than my own.

[Peter_Spaeth]

It's self evidently written speech so any legal claim would be for libel. That said, and I don't know this to be the case, but it would not surprise me if there is informal usage that some sources recognize where slander is also a more generic term for defamation and not limited to oral speech.

Hmm. dictionary.com definition 2

a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report:
The writer is spewing a despicable slander against an 87-year-old man, and without a shred of proof.

[G1911]

We have 2 different dictionaries now directly put into this thread showing it was used correctly. The legal context is not the only accepted meaning in the English language (and very obviously not the one used in the statement that has nothing whatsoever to do with the law), which is not chosen by calvindog or myself. Nor is this a particularly rare, obtuse or antiquated usage.



I know I have a mob of readers who hang on my every single word and utterance like a cardboard Delphi. They are excited to try and get me on absolutely anything, but maybe, just maybe one should make sure they are actually correct first. I am an idiot who knows nothing, it cannot be that hard to find something I have said in ~7,000 posts over ten years (all of which contain words and most of which contain a claim to fact of some kind) to correct with something that actually checks out as true.

Let's see how long it is before the next late night out of left field attack that is provably false by the usage of a dictionary yet again. This is such a wonderful use of my impassioned followers time and lives.

[Peter_Spaeth]

I've seen examples of this before, where usage that might be technically incorrect becomes sufficiently widespread that it is recognized as accepted.

[calvindog]

Originally Posted by G1911

We have 2 different dictionaries now directly put into this thread showing it was used correctly. The legal context is not the only accepted meaning in the English language (and very obviously not the one used in the statement that has nothing whatsoever to do with the law), which is not chosen by calvindog or myself. Nor is this a particularly rare, obtuse or antiquated usage.



I know I have a mob of readers who hang on my every single word and utterance like a cardboard Delphi. They are excited to try and get me on absolutely anything, but maybe, just maybe one should make sure they are actually correct first. I am an idiot who knows nothing, it cannot be that hard to find something I have said in ~7,000 posts over ten years (all of which contain words and most of which contain a claim to fact of some kind) to correct with something that actually checks out as true.

Let's see how long it is before the next late night out of left field attack that is provably false by the usage of a dictionary yet again. This is such a wonderful use of my impassioned followers time and lives.

Don’t flatter yourself, I actually agree with your politics and most of what you say out here and have never once tried to get you on anything you’ve said. Libel is written defamation. Slander is spoken defamation. We would never tolerate a colloquial, incorrect word usage. We are paragons of pedantic exactitude. You’re welcome.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by calvindog

Don’t flatter yourself, I actually agree with your politics and most of what you say out here and have never once tried to get you on anything you’ve said. Libel is written defamation. Slander is spoken defamation. We would never tolerate a colloquial, incorrect word usage. We are paragons of pedantic exactitude. You’re welcome.

Oh hardly flattery, for to be a cardboard Delphi is to be a false prophet. I flatter myself by calling myself an idiot who knows nothing, albeit a liberal idiot. In the case of calvindog vs. the dictionary with the question of what a word means, I am going to use the dictionary. As a paragon of pedantic exactitude, I am cognizant that dictionaries are the proper resource for the question and not your opinion of what should be struck from the dictionaries.