Itai Maytal's blog

One of the first things I learned as a journalist, and later again as a media lawyer, was that under the First Amendment the "truth" could not be subject to a viable defamation claim. True statements are simply constitutionally immune and plaintiffs cannot sidestep all of the common law and constitutional protections for true speech through creative pleadings that would merely re-label defamation as another cause of action. The Supreme Court has flatly held as much in a long line of cases going as far back as the 1980s.

Enter then the seemingly bizarro Minnesota case of Moore v. Allen.

In a recent ruling, the Minnesota District Court in that case refused to set aside a jury verdict awarding the plaintiff $60,000 in damages against a blogger who posted truthful information about him that contributed to his losing his job. In other words, although the jury found the statement at issue was truthful and therefore not defamatory, they still ruled in favor of the plaintiff under a claim of "tortuous interference with employment contracts." This ruling seems on its face to be a flagrant violation of a constitutional precept and a prime candidate for reversal on First Amendment grounds. Yet this strange decision out of Hennepin County, Minnesota, merits a closer look.   read more »

A federal appellate court has issued a swift ruling, in a high profile reporter's privilege case, that requires a filmmaker to surrender some of his unpublished footage to a powerful oil company.

Last week I wrote about a brewing court battle between filmmaker Joe Berlinger and the oil company Chevron over 600 hours of outtakes from his documentary, “Crude: The Real Price of Oil” (“Crude”).  Chevron and its attorneys had argued in federal district court in the Southern District of New York that they wanted the footage because it might be useful to them in their pending lawsuits in Ecuador, which arose out of charges of widespread oil pollution in the country. Crude covers the underlying class-action civil lawsuit against Chevron.   read more »

A filmmaker's fight against an oil company seeking his raw documentary footage has spurred a national debate on the reporter's privilege, pitting media organizations and filmmakers against powerful corporations and criminal defense attorneys.  At stake is the breadth of the protection given to unpublished newsgathering materials and, ultimately, the basic trust between journalists and their sources.

On July 14, lawyers for filmmaker Joe Berlinger will go before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York to appeal an order requiring Berlinger to turn over to the Chevron Corporation 600 hours of footage collected for his 2009 film, "Crude: The Real Price of Oil" ("Crude"). Chevron sought disclosure of the footage in connection with an ongoing class action suit against it in an Ecuadorian court. The lawsuit revolves around oil pollution in the Ecuadorian Amazon, allegedly caused in the 1970s and 80s by Texaco. Chevron absorbed the legal liabilities of Texaco after it merged with the company in 2001. The oil company believes the Crude footage will shed light on a corrupt legal process in Ecuador and help in the defense of two of its lawyers facing related criminal charges.   read more »