I agree.
How is defaming someone in a public setting like a convention any different than defaming someone on a public social media platform?
There shouldn't be a difference.
The ruling makes no sense.
The magistrate says it's because each one is an individual publication, therefore each one is an individual tort.
So the Houston convention statements are different from the Internet statements referencing that act. Unless it was an exact reprint of his con statements, this seems like a valid analysis.
Note that this doesn't mean the internet statements weren't defamatory, just that the court doesn't think it automatically has jurisdiction over Internet statements made towards a broad audience. It wants defamation targeted at a Texas forum, and Meyer didn't show that.
I partially agree and disagree with
@AnOminous above. This isn't a
ridiculous position for the court to take, if they are supposed to treat each case of defamation as an individual tort and consider jurisdiction accordingly. But yeah, there
should be enough of an argument to join the two into one case in front of one court.
I'm not familiar enough with
pendent jurisdiction to say whether it should be a no-brainer in this case. Social media audience is broad enough that its publications shouldn't be presumed to be targeted at a specific venue. If you're already treating it as a standalone tort, then the audience should also be considered in isolation. It's a legitimate argument, at least. (And in other cases, this logic could be applied to the Plaintiff's benefit as well.)
This may be yet another instance of the Internet moving too fast and the law hasn't caught up to how it works.
