libel suit

In February, we wrote about how Washington Redskins (er, we mean Washington Professional Football Team Who Shall Not Be Named) owner Dan Snyder had such a thin skin that he had sued a local newspaper, the Washington City Paper, claiming libel over a silly s

One thing I've never quite understood about the UK: it has some of the most ridiculous libel laws around, that are notoriously plaintiff-friendly... and yet, its tabloids are well known for simply making stories up completely.

I'm a bit confused about how those two things co-exist, but it appears to be the case.

While there still are all sorts of problems with UK libel law, a recent ruling in the UK's High Court tossed out a lawsuit because the potential damages were way too small to merit a trial.

Specifically, someone charged a blogger with defamation for a blog post, but most of the content in that blog post was actually based on an article on the plaintiff's own website.

Wall Street Journal: "Justice David Eady ruled that Google's Internet search engine isn't considered a publisher under defamation law, and therefore isn't responsible for the content of the short descriptions of Web sites that appear in Google searches."