quote:

Originally posted by ratso:
Philadelphia is the city of litigation. If someone hurts your feelings, Philly people will sue.

I think we could go head-to-head with you in SoCal...

quote:

Originally posted by Darlene:

quote:

Originally posted by ratso:
Philadelphia is the city of litigation. If someone hurts your feelings, Philly people will sue.

I think we could go head-to-head with you in SoCal...

I agree. If memory serves me correctly, California passed a law about 10 years ago that protects folks from something called a vexatious litigant. Nobody sues like a Californian.

Regarding the topic under discussion. Can anybody name a case in which a newspaper was successfully sued in this manner. I'm not talking about a libelous situation, but a story involving a clear case of opinion, such as a restaurant review. I'm a journalist, not a lawyer, but my girlfriend is both, and neither of us could think of a single instance.

Such a suit would be DOA, as it should be.

There's actually a case on similar lines working it's way through the Oz High Court at the moment, although the issues being determined are fairly boring technical issues.

For a restaurant, especially one of the new ones in a high cost/high profile area, a bad review can kill the restaurant pretty quickly. So there is an onus on a published review in a major newspaper to be fair and accurate.

Unfortunately a number of modern critics think that being a critic entails being very catty and pedantic. If I'm reading a review I want to find out about what's being reviewed, not how clever the critic thinks he or she is.