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Mayor of Florence Sues Wikipedia
ZioBit writes "Florence Mayor Leonardo Domenici and one of the city assessors
are suing (Google translation) Wikipedia on the basis of a (possible) defamation regarding the handling of public parkings assignation to a private company, "Florence Parking". The apparent problem is that both of their wives are members of the board of directors of "Florence Parking", and Wikipedia is reporting it."
(There are Florence's in Florida, Georgia, California and for all I know every state in the Union.)
Since this particular Florence is the one in Italy, the laws on defamation are pretty different from the US. I would not trust any legal
analysis in Slashdot for any jurisdiction, but for Italy I would trust it even less than usual.
If a conflict of interest exists and someone points it out, you can't (successfully) sue them for defamation. Stating the truth counts as a rock-solid defense.
Apparently this is not the case in Italy though. Maybe we should send the good mayor an hour long looping clip of the scene in "A Few Good Men" where Jack Nicholson rails, "you can't handle the truth!"
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Not quite. Politicians end up using the lawsuit weapon as a damage minimization tool. When the damaging information is already out and there is no possibility to make it go away, to avoid looking corrupt they usually start a bunch of lawsuits so that they can get some spotlight time to announce the world that the entire scandal is nothing more than a smear campaign targeting an innocent, upright citizen. They use that time to tell the world (at least their constituents) that the accusations are nothing more than vicious lies and that they are going to fight those nasty, evil liars and bring them to justice. Then the lawsuit goes on very uninterestingly, the media loses interest on the case, everyone forgets the whole thing and then it doesn't matter the outcome of the case. After all, the last thing that their constituents have heard about that problem was that that honorable politician was fighting those liars who were trying to smear his good name.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Firstly, these exceptions are narrow and not relevant to this discussion, bringing them up is immature pedantry. The politician's wives being discussed are not dead and their place on a board is not a natural defect. These exceptions are there because speaking ill of the dead and teasing physical defects achieves no purpose, the general spirit of the law remains that someone has the right to say the truth if it has a point.
Secondly, truth is actually narrower than legal-truth in defamation cases (as discussed in the wikipedia article) since in most cases the defendant must only show that they had a reasonable belief that it was true, rather than it actually being so. If you misunderstand reality you are not liable for speaking your mind unless it can be proven that you were negligent with your facts, i.e. published without checking them. As for real truth, well truth is truth, the courts aren't far enough up their own arse to start calling black white when it comes to facts outside the courtroom, they have enough to confuse inside.
Thirdly, for fuck's sake, if you're going to discuss law at least write "you", capitalise the first letter of sentences and stop using ellipsis as a comma. It makes it easier to read and makes people take you seriously. A little sloppy spelling and grammar is fine, but deliberately garbling a word just to save two letters from your sentence is just pathetic.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem