President Trump has sued the British Broadcasting Corporation for $10 billion. He alleges defamation and violation of a Florida unfair trade practices statute, arising out of the BBC’s deceptive editing of the speech Trump gave to his rally in Washington on January 6, 2017. Disregard the $10 billion–it is meaningless. You can read the Complaint here.
All of the commentary I have seen on the lawsuit consists of liberal reporters and liberal “experts” assuring one another that Trump has a lousy case. I have found the commentary to be almost entirely unenlightening.
Sure, Trump could lose. But the critics have focused on 1) the fact that the BBC documentary that is the basis for the lawsuit was not broadcast in Florida where Trump brought his case; and 2) it is hard for public figures to win defamation cases in the U.S. But I think Trump’s lawyers do a pretty good job of alleging that the BBC’s “Panorama” show was available in Florida via several formats, and was viewed by people in Florida. Trump’s claim only has to have enough contact with Florida to establish jurisdiction; if he gets that far, he can collect all his damages, not just the ones he incurred in Florida.
As to the difficulty of winning a defamation case, that is certainly true, but can be overstated. Here, the BBC has already admitted that its editing of the clip was inappropriate, and has apologized to Trump. Its Director Tim Davie and its CEO, Deborah Turness, resigned over the incident. So Trump starts with a major head start.
In some cases, the media defendant’s main defense is that the challenged statements were statements of opinion, not fact. I don’t think the BBC can make such a claim here. In other cases (e.g. Sarah Palin’s suit against the New York Times) the defense is that the challenged statement was an innocent mistake of fact. But here, the BBC’s splicing together of clips taken nearly an hour apart in Trump’s speech, so as to create a misleading impression, can only have been intentional. Why wouldn’t that meet the actual malice standard?
Further, while malice in the normal sense is not “actual malice” in the legal sense, the BBC’s malice toward Trump has been patent for a long time, as the Complaint persuasively lays out. That history could well influence both judge and jury.
In my opinion, if Trump draws a reasonably friendly judge and a favorable jury, he could very possibly win this case. So another in a series of settlements could be in the offing.
