DEFAMATION SUIT AGAINST FULMER DISMISSED

It’s mustache Wednesday. This post needs a Johnnie Cochran photo or something to ’stache it up.

I say skip CFB for a day and find the stache from that guy on Gonzaga’s basketball team. Saw it on ESPN this morning. Crazy. They couldn’t stop talking about it.

This ruling strikes me as a little fishy. Fulmer is on tape saying that this player’s mother is having an affair with an Alabama assistant. No one now disputes that it is untrue.

So what’s the legal complication? It’s certainly libelous on its face — you can’t go around publicly charging private individuals with having affairs. I predict this is reinstated on appeal. Also, this story misses the bigger picture, which is that because the other count will proceed, Fulmer will have to be deposed, something he has long sought to avoid.

If all Fulmer told the investigators was that he heard rumors of an affair, or left himself similar wiggle room, there’s no slander. He probably wouldn’t be dumb enough to positively state something he had no way of knowing, and we know he had no way of “knowing” because it wasn’t true.

But, you argue, what if he THOUGHT it was true? Then he uses the good faith defense, and there’s still no slander. Slander or defamation requires that a person acts in bad faith, speaking about things they knew to be untrue or otherwise acting with obvious dishonesty (like notifying workplace security that a co-worker is stalking you when all he did was wait for you after a meeting, at your mutual place of business, then follow you to your car, without acting threatening or otherwise icky. Especially if you then tell someone else that security is looking into him, or something).

Phil’s situation sounds like a very easy case to beat, and the dismissal is completely surprising.

UNsurprising, even. Drool….

Anything Judas Brutus says is obviously in bad faith….