Legal News

Frustrated Hoops Fan Faces First Amendment Flap

By Dan Slater

Bret Adams, a lawyer, represents George Karl (pictured), the coach of the Denver Nuggets, an NBA team with a fairly respectable 35-24 record. Andrew Feinstein, a frustrated fan, started a blog called www.firegeorgekarl.com. Adams sent the blogger an email which reads:

Is your life really this boring and meaningless that you would spend the hours necessary to create such a website?

As Coach Karl’s counsel I am putting you on notice that I will sue you into bankruptcy should you cross the boundaries of permissible speech.

Intrigued, the Law Blog reached out to Adams. Via e-mail, we received the following response:

Thanks for your email. While George Karl may be a public figure within the sports community, there are limits to what is fair comment under New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964). Many cases quote from the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 59 that a statement is defamatory if it “tends to harm the reputation of another as to lower him in the estimation of the community or deter third persons from associating or dealing with him.” Sure, people are free to criticize Mr. Karl’s record, his coaching style, or both. But free speech has its limits. My role as Mr. Karl’s counsel is to see to it that the line between free speech and defamation is not crossed. I stand by my statement that people should have better and more important things to do than to create mean-spirited blogs and that, while I respect (and exercise) free speech rights, there are boundaries and consequences.

LB’ers, we’ve perused the site and, though we’ve been wrong before, can’t find much that would rise to Sullivan’s defamation standard. In any case, for those who took last month’s MBE exam, how would you critique Adams’ representation of his client?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 04, 2008 (boomark / email).