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Obviously just speculating, but I would imagine a mitigating factor was that Elon and Unsworth were already involved in a public spat before the tweet in questi
by zaroth 7y ago
Obviously just speculating, but I would imagine a mitigating factor was that Elon and Unsworth were already involved in a public spat before the tweet in question.
I think if you tell someone to sodomize themselves with a submarine, you may get called names in return. To then run to the courts demanding $190 million in damages is a bit of a stretch.
Another factor could be that Musk was persuasive in convincing the jury that he wasn’t asserting a fact that he knew was false in that tweet, but an insulting colloquialism, which would not meet the definition of defamation (as I understand it - and IANAL).
Ultimately how you evaluate the result is in the eye of the beholder.
It does seem to me that Musk has learned from this, and there’s been a notable lack of controversy in his Twitter feed over the last several months.
- pg_is_a_butt 7y agoHe just stated publicly that he didn't mean he was a real pedo, and suddenly the case goes away.
- notus 7y agoIt was because you have to prove defamation and nothing bad happened to the guy as a result of what Musk said, so hard to prove they were defamed.
- dresstotheleft 7y agoIn most jurisdictions there is something called defamation per se, which automatically presumes damages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law#Defamation_per_se https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_defamation_law#D...
- cookie_monsta 7y agoDefamation is the act of harming somebody's reputation. All that needs to be proven is that there was one more person who thought he was a pedo as a result of Musk's statements.