Judge dismisses censorious lawsuit against John Oliver

Please don’t ask me to explain the giant squirrel with the “Eat shit, Bob!” cheque
[full size: 600×337]

Last year, a segment on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight exposed the, shall we say, checkered safety record of West Virginia coal magnate Bob Murray and his company. Murray, being a big boy, responded by suing Oliver and HBO. Months later, it all comes to a predictable, if overdue, end:

A West Virginia judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Murray Energy against HBO and Last Week Tonight host John Oliver, according to Lawful Masses, a legal website and livestream series hosted by copyright attorney Leonard French. Coal magnate Bob Murray, along with his company, Murray Energy, and other associated coal companies, filed the suit alleging defamation stemming from an episode that aired on June 18, 2017, that examined and exposed the coal companies’ misgivings. Murray and his company were revealed in the episode to have harassed the families of mine cave-in victims, creating unsafe working environments and ignoring the environmental impact of the coal industry with some clever funnies thrown in.

[…]

The original filing was littered with hyperbolic speech and attempts to garner sympathy that hardly amounted to legal claims, and the defendants’ attorneys filing a motion to dismiss based off of their rights under the First Amendment, which a West Virginia judge upheld and ruled that the case should be dismissed with prejudice, which keeps the plaintiffs from filing the charges against Oliver and HBO again.

This was a transparently bogus lawsuit from the get-go, but it was never intended to win. The point was to try and bully Oliver and HBO into silence, something rich, thin-skinned bullies like Murray do routinely and to great effect, as most of their targets don’t have the money, fame and legal counsel that Oliver enjoys. That said, I’m not certain why Murray thought picking this particular fight was a good idea – someone on his legal team has to have told him that a company the size of HBO would hardly be cowed by a blatantly frivolous lawsuit that was destined to be tossed out sooner or later.

Nonetheless, as has been said at length, incidents like this illustrate the need for strong anti-SLAPP laws around the country, and preferably at the federal level. If West Virginia had one in place, this bullshit suit would’ve been tossed out long ago and Murray would’ve been forced to pay Oliver and HBO’s legal fees to boot. As long as many states have weak or nonexistent anti-SLAPP laws, litigious thugs will continue to sue anyone who says things they don’t like, and often win, with impunity.

(via @BoothSweet; retweet by @Popehat)