How would the defendants in the McLibel case have more defenses in the U.S. than in the U.K McDonald's sued two activists in Britain for libel, and won what I would consider a "mixed" verdict in the so-called McLibel case. My understanding is that defendants in Britain have to prove statements true by the preponderance of evidence, whereas in the U.S. the standard of evidence is "compelling" (a lower standard). Also, the judge found partly in favor of the defendants. My understanding of American law is that no defamation occurs if the 'sting' of the actual facts (as found by the judge or jury) is greater than the sting of the false allegations. In fact, according to wikipedia, [Judge} "Bell ruled that McDonald's endangered the health of their workers and customers by "misleading advertising", that they "exploit children", that they were "culpably responsible" in the infliction of unnecessary cruelty to animals, and that they were "antipathetic" to unionisation and paid their workers low wages." Which of these, or other defenses would give libel defendants more protection in the U.S. than they enjoyed in the U.K.?
My understanding is that defendants in Britain have to prove statements true by the preponderance of evidence, whereas in the U.S. the standard of evidence is "compelling" (a lower standard). This is not the case. Preponderance of the evidence can still be the burden of proof in the United States (in a civil libel case, although it must be proof beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal libel case). But, the difference is in what has to be proved. In Britain, it appears to be necessary to show that the statements are true in order to prevail. In the U.S., it is merely necessary to show in a case like this one (because it involves a matter of public concern) that the statements were made with knowledge that they were false, or with reckless disregard to the truth or falsity of the statements made. A factual basis for believing the statements made to be true is a defense if the basis is at all reasonable, and is a complete defense if the factual basis for making the statement is disclosed and that is true or believed to be true by the speaker. It is not necessary for the statements to actually be true under U.S. law in a case such as this one, although actual truth is also a defense, which is not the case in all circumstances in U.K. law, and was not the case under the historical common law. Historically, defamation claims could be brought for statements critical of the monarch, for statements pointing out the natural infirmities of someone for example by mocking a person with low IQ, or for speaking ill of the dead. Furthermore, the U.S. has a variety of doctrines that make it hard to find that a false statement was made in the first place. For example, statements of opinion are not actionable and many of the alleged falsehoods in the McLibel case would be considered to be statements of opinion in U.S. law rather than statements of fact. Similarly, U.S. law does not require that statements be literally true, and instead recognizes that a defendant may have been engaged in using hyperbole, or may have gotten the gist of the accusation right even though strictly speaking the exact statement made is not technically true (e.g. someone might say that a company paid a "penalty" when it actually paid a settlement amount in a lawsuit seeking a penalty or paid an amount representing compensatory damages only rather than a penalty amount). In the same vein, it must be clear from the context of the statement that the person making it intended it to be received as a truthful account and not a mere parody or satire which was intended to be understood as false. For example, I couldn't sue someone who made a knowingly false statement that I assassinated King George V, who died several decades before I was born, or that I was telepathically controlling my uncle because I had a space alien parasite in my spine. Those claims are so absurd that they would be inferred to intended to be fictional on their face. Certain kinds of falsehoods (e.g. lying about one's military record in a a political campaign) are simply not actionable as a matter of law, no matter what, as the harm is not concrete enough. There is not, however, necessarily a defense under U.S. law to defamation liability if the defendant said many things that were true, but something else that would be defamatory in isolation. For example, even if everything else were true, if the defendant had also stated that the CEO of the Plaintiff was convicted of leading a Nazi concentration camp and killed millions of people, which would have been possible given the CEO's age, knowing perfectly well that the person with a similar name to the CEO who did so was someone else who died an untimely death decades ago, that statement might be defamatory and actionable (at least by the CEO personally and probably by the company if it was alleged that he was hired despite the fact that the company was aware of this circumstance).
As an academic matter, the US system has struggled with this, and law professors spend their lives debating it. As a realistic matter, I'd bet that company in your example gets nailed. On the theory, the issue here is but-for cause. Civil liability requires that the jury find it more likely than not, or over 50% likely, that but-for D's actions, P's injuries would not have occurred. Your hypo puts it at exactly 50, and tie goes to the defendant, so in this case even the theory is clear. But, say you change it a little bit to make it more like 65 or 70%. Now, you're getting into the territory of the classic blue bus case. A man is hit by a blue bus. Two companies in town own blue busses, and one company owns 90% of them. Can he recover against that company with no other evidence? The black letter answer is no, that naked statistical evidence doesn't cut it. The rationale is that if it were the other way, anytime someone got hit by a blue bus, that company would automatically have to pay out unless they had some evidence to disprove their liability. The burden of proof has been shifted, violating a fundamental tenet of our legal system. But, this doctrine obviously poses an issue for plaintiffs like yours. It's one thing to say that someone hit by a bus needs to have more evidence. Theoretically, they could go out and get it: they could find the bus routes and schedules, examine where they were, and show that X company had a bus going by there at that time. They can also canvas for witnesses. It's much harder when, as your excellent hypo touches on, the science is so complicated. One controversial solution that has been debated a lot recently is market-share liability, but that doesn't seem pertinent here because you have mentioned another company. On the legal realist side. As far as I can tell the system usually finds a way to hold the company responsible. One example is the tobacco litigation. My understanding is the science couldn't definitively prove that smoking caused cancer, but it could prove that it raised the risk significantly. Here's some information on that https://www.tortmuseum.org/the-tobacco-cases/ from the American Museum of Tort Law, which, yes, is a real thing.
Law is more like sport than mathematics You don’t know how it will turn out until you play the game. If a case goes to trial it’s because at both sides believe they can win. Both sides probably have good reasons for their belief. At least one of them is wrong.
Truth is a defense to defamation Bob must prove the truth of his statement if Rob sues - there is a reverse onus for this defense. Because this is a civil trial the burden is balance of probabilities. Provided Bob can prove Rob stole his bike he will win. A conviction for doing so is pretty good (but not necessarily conclusive) evidence. Absent that, Bob would need other evidence. Of course, if Bob has said that Rob was convicted of stealing the bike, he’s going to lose.
tl;dr No, N.Y. Times v. Sullivan established the actual malice standard in the context of defamation. It is not illegal for a public figure to claim the sun revolves around the Earth unless some other law intervenes (maybe something fact-dependant like fraud or lying under oath). Background Here's an example of how N.Y. Times would work in California. Under California law, slander, along with libel, are the defamation torts. See Cal. Civ. Code. § 44. The First Amendment limits California’s slander law by requiring public figures prove actual malice when they want to sue someone for defaming them. Khawar v. Globe Int’l, 19 Cal. 4th 254, 262 (1998). (The Supreme Court got involved in N.Y. Times in the first place because of the First Amendment implications on the States' defamation laws.) In turn, "actual malice" means a statement was made "with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false." Khawar, 19 Cal. 4th at 275 (citing N.Y. Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 279–80 (1964)). As to knowledge, California courts consider only actual—not constructive—knowledge. Comedy III Prods., Inc. v. Gary Saderup, Inc., 25 Cal. 4th 387, 398 (2001). In turn, actual knowledge "consists in express information of fact." I.E. Assoc. v. Safeco Title Ins. Co., 39 Cal. 3d 281, 285 (1985). This is a bunch of lawyer-speak, but it basically sets up a pretty high bar for the public figure who is trying to prove defamation. Again, N.Y. Times doesn't have to do with barring public figures from making non-defamatory false statements. You'd have to look to other areas of law about false representations or lying under oath for a claim against the politician. california
Two reasons that spring to mind: The Respondent wanted the appeal to proceed so that they would have definitive case law from a higher court. That is they thought they would win and, quite possibly, the appellant thought they would win too. Rolling the dice on a losing proposition is not so bad if you have no skin in the game so the Respondent is encouraging the appeal. Its a commercial PR decision - it looks bad in the press if you use your money and power to prevent someone from pursuing their legal rights. This way, they can put their hand on their hearts and say "we gave them every opportunity to prove us wrong".
Almost every European nation has a &quot;hate speech&quot; law that makes the use of offensive bigoted words of phrases illegal. The U.S. does not have any such laws, and the First Amendment makes such laws unconstitutional. The closest the U.S. can get are laws criminalizing &quot;Hate Crimes&quot; which are ordinary crimes which were motivated in part or in whole by the victim's actual or perceived protected class status. Other specific examples as mentioned in comments, are that Germany has strict laws about advocacy of Nazi ideology. This is completely legal in the United States. Nazi ideology is not popular in the U.S. by any means, but it's allowed to be advocated for because of the strong Freedom of Speech Laws in the United States. In other regards, while U.S. Law is fairly similar to U.K. Law (you have to get into weeds about the differences), it is way more difficult to sue for defamation in U.S. than in the U.K. For starters, the U.S. has the &quot;Public Person&quot; rule which requires that any defamation about a person who is largely known to the public (politicians and celebrities largely) must prove Actual Malice Or Reckless Disregard for the Truth (I.E. You didn't even do the basic research into the statement) in order to prove defamation. But there's also the matter of the burden of proof. In the U.K. the speaker of the alleged defamation must prove in court that the statement was not defamatory. In the U.S., all legal challenges to are &quot;protected speech&quot; until proven otherwise in a court of law. This means that even with the &quot;Public Person&quot; rule set aside, the statement's original speaker need not prove that their speech is truthful, and the burden's on the accuser of defamation to prove it. Edit: Additional Info based on comments, but &quot;Protected Speech&quot; is a legal term used in the U.S. that defines speech that is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States as opposed to commercial speech, which is speech used to make advertise or to further commerce and is restricted, and unprotected speech, which is speech that can land one in trouble. While the list of types of speech is long, every form of speech restriction is very very narrowly tailored. &quot;Hate Speech&quot;, which would be the utterance of words or phrases that can be offensive to people of a protected class (a characteristic that is beyond the individuals control). &quot;Hate Crimes&quot; are not necessarily spoken during the commission of the crime, but rather can be charged in addition to the crime. Suppose a serial killer was killing people of a certain race, this is not enough for police to go on because most serial killers target victims that meet a physical description (same skin color, same hair color, same gender). Once the killer is captured, police search his apartment and find a manifesto where the killer admits that he is selecting his target because he believes people of this protected class are subhuman and thus his superior nature gives him the right to kill them, this would show that the killings were motivated out of hatred, and thus qualify as a hate crime. The way he phrases this may be purely academic and use in offensive language OR it could be laden with all manner of crass slurs. It doesn't matter... what he said is protected speech but what he did is... well... to quote Guardians of the Galaxy... is &quot;murder... on of the worst crimes of all. So also illegal.&quot; Hate crimes criminalize crimes that are motivated by hatred... they do not criminalize speech that is hateful.
Is it true that a suit of defamation could require “very little effort”? No. Definitely not. The Wikipedia article (and understandably the comment on which it is premised) leaves out many details about substantive and procedural law which are essential in US jurisdictions. For instance, the [Wikipedia] item of "1. accusing someone of a crime" is insufficient for the falsehoods to be considered defamation per se. The crime of which one is falsely accused needs to be considered an infamous crime or involve moral turpitude. Under [US] defamation law, a crime is deemed serious or infamous when it is classified as felony or its punishment could exceed one year of prison. The case law cited in Lakin v. Rund, 896 N.W.2d 76 (2016) reflects how this criterion is uniform among US jurisdictions. Another difficult issue in defamation lawsuits is the need to prove the defendant's mental state known as actual malice. Even where there is clear proof of a defamer's actual malice, a plaintiff can be denied justice because of judge's arbitrary choice to side with the defendant (just like with non-defamation lawsuits). For case law from various jurisdictions regarding defamation law and actual malice, you might want to see the citations in my briefs in the SCOTUS here and here. Most of the records in regard to the latter case are available here. Defamation lawsuits are not exempt of having to comply with the procedural laws involved in judicial proceedings either, nor is the discovery, drafting, or legal research any simpler for being a lawsuit about defamation. In the context of the comments that prompted your question here, the "repeated violations" that SE imputed to former moderator Monica would hardly be grounds for a viable lawsuit against SE for defamation per se or otherwise. Here are some reasons: Rejecting a policy of gender pronouns such as the one SE seeks to impose is not considered an infamous crime. There is no legislation to that effect, at least yet. An actual refusal to adhere to that policy hardly involves moral turpitude. Far from involving corruption (i.e., moral turpitude), the controversy about gender pronouns touches on some of a person's deepest beliefs. Thus, the "offense" of opposing such a policy cannot be said to constitute an act of moral turpitude. The previous two items rule out a viable claim of defamation per se. Thus, Monica would have to prove that SE's falsehoods about her (whatever they are) caused her concrete losses (a typical example is lost income) by prompting others to dissociate from her. I am unaware of whether Monica's situation would fit in this scenario. You are right in that a claim of mental distress is not viable either. Note from here or here that in a claim of Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (IIED) (1) the conduct must be intentional and reckless; (2) the conduct must be extreme and outrageous; (3) there must be a causal connection between the wrongful conduct and the emotional distress; and (4) the emotional distress must be severe Any claims of harassment that might be available to Monica would not be against SE, but against the specific individuals who engaged in harassing her directly. Depending on the methods and severity of the harassment, Monica might be able to obtain injunctive relief --typically in the form of restraining orders-- against those specific individuals. It is noteworthy that not all criticism or heckling at or about Monica would be cognizable as harassment.