Comment by jcranmer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jcranmer | Hacker News Reader

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Defamation requires negligence (if the plaintiff is not a public figure) or actual malice (if the plaintiff is a public figure). In every case you'll ever hear about, the plaintiff is a public figure, and I don't doubt the police officers will be ruled public figures here.

Actual malice in the legal sense has nothing to do with the regular meaning of those words in English. It instead requires that the defamer have seriously entertained doubts about the truth of the statements, and published them anyways.

In this case? I'd have a hard time finding them defamatory were I on the jury. One of the statements is alleging that the cop is a "convicted" domestic abuser, where the truth is that he has a protective order placed against him in relation to alleged domestic abuse yet has never been charged nor convicted. Another statement is alleging that the cop is "on the slow spectrum" on social media, which--honestly, I'm surprised the judge didn't toss that on motion to dismiss, it's pretty clearly typical hyperbolic puffery.

> Actual malice in the legal sense has nothing to do with the regular meaning of those words in English. It instead requires that the defamer have seriously entertained doubts about the truth of the statements, and published them anyways.

How is that different from the ordinary English meaning? Or does American English differ from British English in this regard?

From the Cambridge Dictionary[1]:

"the intention to do something wrong and esp. to cause injury: "

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/malice

All it takes to get a protective order is a allegation.

It is a common tactic that women use in divorce to file false domestic abuse or child abuse claims. It's called a "silver bullet divorce". Unfortunately abuse of the legal system like this has made it necessary to be skeptical of claims of domestic abuse without evidence.

Sure, there's actually a chasm of difference between a protective order and a full criminal conviction. That's enough to meet the falsehood requirement of defamation.

However, to demonstrate actual malice, you have to demonstrate that the defendant knew of just how different the two things were, which is frankly a pretty tall ask.

> However, to demonstrate actual malice, you have to demonstrate that the defendant knew of just how different the two things were, which is frankly a pretty tall ask

If I was a defendant in such a thing, I'd point to numerous cases where police departments have claimed, and courts have agreed, that police are not expected to be experts on the law.

"If law enforcement officers can be held by the court to not have to have a nuanced understanding of the law, how could I possibly?"

A comparison is not relevant. The threshold is whether or not the person making the claim knew, independent of anything anyone else in the world does or doesn't know, and the burden is on the other side to prove that they did.

That's a little reductive. If that were so, there'd barely be a need for defense in our criminal system, just "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you've heard the prosecution's case - do you believe they've established guilt?". Instead, regardless of the ostensible burden, statements like this by the defense work to erode any claims of "beyond reasonable doubt".

You're conflating the civil and criminal judicial systems when the reality is they're quite separate, and defamation has its own special corner of the civil realm where plaintiffs have a very steep hill to climb.

That isn’t necessary. Iowa has no-fault divorce.

They don't have no fault child custody though, which IMO is a most important part of the divorce. In practice by far the biggest money prize in a higher income divorce is a big child support award, and there you want to fault the spouse as much as possible to turn your kid into a cash cow to "maintain living standards" while in your disproportionate custody.

The protective order in this case is from a former girlfriend.

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