If you’re worried about what someone might say about you in a fax sent to your office, better keep an eye on your fax machine — at least if you gave the sender reasons to think they could fax you there regarding certain matters. It is just such an invitation — two of them, really — that lost plaintiff her defamation case in Martinelli v. International House USA, case no. B197536 (2d Dist. Apr. 11, 2008). Plaintiff was an attorney whose family also operated an insurance agency and whose niece from Italy was visiting the U.S. on a student visa. Plaintiff enrolled her niece in English classes at defendant International…
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California Joins Jurisdictions Holding that Injunction Against Speech Already Proven at Trial to be Defamatory is Constitutional
In a rather comprehensive analysis of the constitutional doctrine of prior restraint, the California Supreme Court holds in Balboa Island Village Inn, Inc. v. Lemen, case no. S127904 (April 26, 2007), that speech already proven at trial to be defamatory may be enjoined without running afoul of the First Amendment. Reaching back more than half a millennium to Blackstone’s commentaries as well as evaluating present-day commentaries and U. S. Supreme Court cases, the Balboa Island majority offers a primer on its view of the prior restraint doctrine. The majority draws the line between speech already adjudicated to be unprotected by the First Amendment and that which has not: “In determining…