Um, is this legal?
 

So I saw that my friend joined a Facebook group called:

Warning against rapist [guy's name]

So I was like wow, what a sick joke...I clicked on the group and saw that this was the description:In the group's profile was the guy's picture.

I had an immediate reaction to this.

What's your take?

Well, it's not illegal. It's a little ethically questionable. Maybe the sexual assault in question is a he-said-she-said issue with no evidence and the alleged victim is trying to spread the word/drum up some sympathy/get justice the only way she knows how.

Seriously, it sounds like something straight out of Law & Order: SVU.

I dont know if it is legal or not
but it sounds like slander to me if he hasnt been convicted. My sister is the atty in my family, so what do I know??
If he really did those things than good fo her and I hope she doesnt get in trouble!

Yeah..... it just seems a little.... I dunno....

I don't think I would join such a group, but over one hundred people have already.

Well, if I'm looking at the same Facebook group, it seems that someone's already brought up libel and slander:

^^^ Yeah, same group.

^^^ You have too much sense.

It's sad that my first instinct was to come post about it on GC.

In answer to your question, that's definitely not illegal...unless it's untrue. If it's true, then the First Amendment could protect the group creator's right to publish that information. If it's not, then it becomes slander which is a subcategory of defamation and is punishable by law. The guy could take it to trial and even sue for damages if he lost his job because of the accusation or something similar. However, he'd have to provide concrete evidence that he's innocent in order to make the charge stick. Even so, if the group creator says she really was raped and honestly thought it was him she could still get off on a technicality. He would have to somehow prove that she knew what she was saying was false.


That's what I gathered from here: http://definitions.uslegal.com/s/slander/

You've got the right idea, except in this case it isn't slander, its libel. Slander is oral defamation, while libel is written.

If this guy decided to take it to trial he would have to prove "actual malice." If I can remember my Law of Mass Comm class correctly, the guy would have to prove that the creator of the group created the group without proper knowledge and didn't regard the validity of the information.

So he would have to prove that the creator of the group KNEW the information was false, but that they didn't care.

Actual malice is reeeeeeally hard to prove a lot of the time, especially the fact about knowing whether the information was actually true.

This looks like a job for INTERNET LAWYER!

http://mousseymoose.com/images/Photo...day%20Cake.JPG

Isn't that half a dozen in one hand and 6 in the other? ;)

Some friends and I had a moral & legal dilemma like this back in college. A group of pledges from XYZ fraternity gang raped one of my Kappa Delta sisters. The victim chose to leave school and not pursue the matter. We had other ideas.

What we wanted to do was write a letter listing the "alleged" offenders, make a few thousand copies and take it to every sorority on campus and some of the dorms. I'll admit it would have been a bit out of revenge but we were also honesty concerned about the other women who could potentially be victims as well. Our biggest hope was that by notifying the sororities no one would participate in anything with XYZ unless they dropped their pledges.

In the end we didn't have enough accurate information, our KD sister was unreachable and we were worried about accusations of libel and slander. My guess is that nothing happened to the pledges but I'm not sure. I left college about 2 months later.

Is it illegal? Not that I can tell.. she's not going to be locked up.

Will it get her sued? Probably, yes. Libel, false light, etc.

This is correct. In order to win a libel suit, the guy would have to prove that the person who created this group knew the information she was supplying was false and that she was intending to cause harm to him. First amendment protects her.

There are a ton of groups on Facebook similar to this one. They're not all claiming rape, but other atrocities.

I guess you've never heard of a false light. Portraying him as a rapist casts him in a false light and can cause him injury.

Accusation of a serious crime is also libel per se. If it's made regarding a private person, there's no requirement for malice. The burden would be on the defendant to prove that what she said was true -- that this fellla is a rapist. Since the police declined to file charges, that's going to be a pretty tall order.

And because something is on Facebook, it's not actionable? What is the point of saying this?

I never said that your information was wrong. I said that you confused libel w/ slander.

ETA: I found my notes from my Law of Mass Comm class....so I changed my post.

In a false light case, they still would have to prove malice. For false light, the information need to not defamatory, only embarrasing and they have to be able to prove 2 things. 1. That the false information was highly offensive to a reasonable person and 2. that the publisher (in this case the creator of the group) was at fault exhibiting either malice or negligence. Because of a ruling in 1967, this guy would have to be required to prove fault in any false light case.

Of course he would - but this isn't the same difficult burden that is required when the 'defamed' is a company or a celebrity, and especially in civil court, it is not much of a reach to think that we could convince a jury that it is 50.1% likely that the person who started the group knew or should have known that others would be angry at the person, that others may want to harm or otherwise mistreat the person, that the person's life would be affected through jobs/web searches/etc., and that the individual targeted would be worse off as a result.

Starting the group, which required effort, satisfies any real or perceived "willful conduct" definition embedded in malice, and it appears that this person knew or should have known that the target would be injured, satisfying any common definition of malice. Further, it's clear the intent was a sort of "vigilante" action, aka "reckless of the law and of the legal rights" of the target, and that there is personal hatred or ill will - under the definition provided in my copy of Black's, it looks like malice isn't a ridiculous proposition here. She may try to argue just cause, but since the authorities in charge of just that sort of determination shied away, she might be up shit creek.

It's just a matter of whether the guy wants to drag the issue into court, since likely the entire episode would enter evidence. Additionally, while there is probably an actual injury, it's not likely he'd recover much unless somehow he missed out on a million-dollar contract as a result. It's probably not worth it, except to remove the actual Facebook group and try to move on.

Unless maybe he knows he is guilty of rape or sexual assault and learned something from Oscar Wilde and Lillian Hellman about suing people for making "false" statements that are actually true.

Which seems pretty unlikely but you don't really want to invite someone to "prove it" when they can.

Yep.

I agree with a lot of what you wrote, but I'm kinda hesitant to say that the group was intended as "personal hatred." The creator of the group could be under the impression that the information she/he gave is competely legitimate and true, and the group is just there to warn others. With this kind of "mentality" it would be harder to prove my 2nd point (about exhibiting negligence). Because if they did enough research, i.e. talking to people this guy might have come in contact with, they could say that they were completely justified in creating the group.

Many states award statutory damages (at least a set minimum figure) for libel per se, which this is.

She's not going to be able to prove the truth of this thing. If she complained to a prosecutor, they apparently didn't even have enough to indict the guy. If that didn't happen, I really doubt that there's any actual proof out there. Her word isn't good enough. It is her burden to prove that what she accuses this guy of is true.

"Malice" for libel doesn't carry the same meaning as it does in criminal law. Malice is almost like a mens rea requirement that the libel be done with knowledge of the falsity or reckless disregard for the truth. That doesn't really matter here though because this guy is not a public figure. To prove libel, he only has to show that the statement accused him of a crime. If she can't prove the truth of what she alleged, game over.

Ah, did not know this - thanks.

Yeah, honestly I was just replying to her assertion more than the actual requirements of the crime - and, to nerd up the thread a little more, my point was that it would be insanely easy to insert the notion of "malice" (whether through legal or common definition) into the mind of the jury, which would in turn drive damages through correlative anger, so I was really thinking as the jury guy. If the money is there, this seems like a no-brainer case to take.

Don't you have different standards for proof in civil cases though?

ETA: I realize this seems particularly dumb in the context of your legal back and forth, but what I mean is: Isn't it conceivable that a prosecutor could decline to try to indict knowing he/she had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt and yet, this guy would be unable to prove libel because he was unable to prove that her claims were false and damaging.

What would the legal standard for proof be? Just a willingness of the jury to believe her over him or what?

Possibly. I would think that a prosecutor, in this case, however, might still indict (which isn't hard to do if there's at lest some evidence) so that they can try to get some sort of a plea bargain with the alleged rapist so that there might be some sort of penalty. That's what I'd do in a case like this.

Even if it was probation or some slap on the wrist, this would be something on his record.

Maybe you're right though.

I'm really not 100% sure what the burden of proof is here. I *think* it's preponderance of the evidence (i.e., if the jury 51% believes she is telling the truth, she wins). It could very well be a greater burden though. I'd have to look at a book that's in the other room right now.. and I'm just not going to do that :)

Yes. Damn me straight to heck. :(

So let's say he didn't have a libel/false light case. Couldn't he still have a case of appropriation? Since the creator of the group used his name & his picture without his permission?

Maybe, but the appropriation tort is more to compensate the plaintiff for the value of his appropriated likeness, i.e., Ford used an actor who sang like Bette Midler in one of their commercials, Bette Midler sued and was compensated for the value of her voice. Vanna White was portrayed by a robot in one of Samsung's ads. She was portrayed for the use of her likeness (I guess in the unique way she flips letters around?). A private plaintiff might use the appropriation tort to bootstrap a claim for emotional harm I suppose. So that might be something worth throwing in as a cause of action.