| Gun Shy In Twitter Shooting
Gallery Ganske Sued Mensch Who Wins Motion To
Dismiss
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon
BBC
- Guardian
UK - Honduras
- The
Source
SDNY COURTHOUSE,
Aug 28 – Should a journalist
win a lawsuit about a tweet he
doesn't like? In the U.S.
District Court for the
Southern District of New York
now in August 2020, this:
"RONNIE ABRAMS,
United States District Judge:
If the Internet is akin to the
Wild West, as many have
suggested, Twitter is,
perhaps, the shooting gallery,
where verbal gunslingers
engage in prolonged hyperbolic
crossfire. It is in this
context of battle by tweet
that the conduct at issue in
this defamation case was born.
Plaintiff Charles Ganske, a
journalist, alleges that
Defendant Louise Daphne
Mensch, a blogger and former
member of Britain’s
Parliament, defamed him and
interfered with his employment
as a result of a tweet that
she posted on July 27, 2018 at
12:32 a.m. (the “Tweet”).
Plaintiff alleges that
Defendant’s single Tweet,
which “interjected” herself
into an ongoing conversation
between Plaintiff and a third
party, who called himself
@Conspirator0, contained
numerous defamatory
statements.
Now before the
Court is Defendant’s motion to
dismiss pursuant to Federal
Rule of Civil Procedure
12(b)(6). Because the Court
concludes that the allegedly
defamatory statements in
Defendant’s Tweet are
nonactionable statements of
opinion, the motion is
granted....
Plaintiff’s
complaint is devoid of any
plausible allegation that
Defendant intended to
interfere with his employment
contract with the AP. The only
allegations to support this
assertion are that Defendant
“had knowledge of Ganske’s
contract and employment,”
Compl. ¶ 29; Defendant “knew
that her characterization of
Ganske would immediately
create reputational risk for
the AP,” id. ¶ 14; and that
she “intentionally interfered
with Ganske’s contract,” id. ¶
30. But these allegations
regarding Defendant’s intent
in posting the Tweet are no
more than conclusory. “[I]t is
not enough that a defendant
engaged in conduct . . . that
happened to constitute a
breach of the third party’s
contract with the plaintiff.”
Roche Diagnostics GmbH v. Enzo
Biochem, Inc., 992 F. Supp. 2d
213, 221 (S.D.N.Y. 2013).
Plaintiff, therefore, fails
to 20 plausibly
allege that “[D]efendant’s
objective was to procure such
a breach.” Roche Diagnostics
GmbH, 992 F. Supp. 2d at 221.
Accordingly,
Plaintiff’s tortious
interference claim is also
dismissed.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons,
Defendant’s motion to dismiss
is granted."
The case is
Ganske v. Mensch, 19-cv-6943
(Abrams).
***
Your
support means a lot. As little as $5 a month
helps keep us going and grants you access to
exclusive bonus material on our Patreon
page. Click
here to become a patron.
Feedback:
Editorial [at] innercitypress.com
SDNY Press Room 480, front cubicle
500 Pearl Street, NY NY 10007 USA
Mail: Box 20047, Dag
Hammarskjold Station NY NY 10017
Reporter's mobile (and weekends):
718-716-3540
Other, earlier Inner City Press are
listed here,
and some are available in the ProQuest
service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
Copyright 2006-2019 Inner City
Press, Inc. To request reprint or other
permission, e-contact Editorial [at]
innercitypress.com for
|
,
