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An alternative to defamation?
By Steven | June 9, 2009
If defamation laws are broken, can we fix them? I’ve been thinking about what we could do instead. It seems to me that the biggest problem is process (defamation cases are notoriously expensive, technical, slow, and stressful). I thought I’d toss an alternative process around for discussion.
How about a different way of protecting people’s reputations that doesn’t involve resort to the courts, where considerable argument and expense is going to get sidetracked on issues of pleading if one party wants? What about an ACC-like trade off where we dump defamation laws in exchange for a statutory reputation complaints tribunal with a first-tier mediation arm? The primary remedy would be a speedy mediated correction, clarification, or agreed statement. The tribunal can resolve cases that can’t be mediated, and can impose damages (with a moderate cap) for serious cases, but again, the main remedy would be an ordered statement. I’d envisage lawyers having a fairly limited role – like the BSA. (And like the BSA it would be subject to appeal and/or judicial review).
This would in many ways be great for the media. They’d save in costs enormously. They’d probably have to publish a few more corrections. Plaintiffs would also get what they want: a quick correction, or, failing that, a prompt ruling on the accuracy of the publication. At the moment, the system really doesn’t benefit anyone except lawyers (and I say that having been on both sides). The best that can be said about it is that defamation litigation is so awful that it encourages settlement. But not necessarily quick ones. And not necessarily principled ones. Of course, the flip side is that it gives wealthy people an extraordinary ability to burn people off.
You might ask: why treat defamation differently to other legal claims? Well, for one thing, we do carve off some important issues that the courts don’t necessarily handle best and set up alternative processes: eg employment issues, immigration matters, copyright licensing, broadcasting standards, data privacy, human rights. Defamation doesn’t sit so oddly among that lot.
Secondly, most other lawsuits don’t affect speech (and particularly the core speech that we most want to protect, as opposed to commercial speech that most jurisdictions accept can be regulated differently)
There’s also an argument that defamation laws are more easily abused by plaintiffs than most other laws, which again would justify taking a different approach. The threshold to get a defamation suit off the ground is extraordinarily low.
Would it be overused by perennial complainants? Maybe. But the BSA is also free to complainants, and while it gets its share of quack complaints, they don’t cripple the system.
I’m sure there would be disadvantages. But the question is: would they be worse than our defamation laws?
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