LA Voice: “A 21st Judicial District Judge has DISMISSED the defamatory lawsuit of a Livingston Parish middle school librarian’s defamation lawsuit against two men she says have attacked her in an effort to rally opposition to the inclusion of what they term “inappropriate” books in the Livingston Parish Library.
In what has to be considered a major stretch of the definition, Judge Erika Sledge determined that librarian Amanda Jones was a “public figure,” and thus fair game under the landmark Sullivan v. New York Times Supreme Court decision which made it more difficult for public figures to pursue libel claims.
I’m not an attorney, but I always felt that the term “public figure” as defined in the Supreme Court’s decision was intended for elected officials and figures of authority, not civil servants. I guess this Supreme Court one day could conceivably determine journalists and garbage collectors (some say those occupations are interchangeable) to be “public figures.”
At any rate, when St. Martin Parish resident Michael Lunsford, president of something called Citizens for a New Louisiana, stuck his nose into the Livingston Parish Library system, he offered encouragement for Livingston Parish resident Ryan Thames to post derogatory messages on Facebook that painted Jones as somehow encouraging pedophilia by speaking out in a public hearing against censorship.
Posts by Thames that accused Jones of advocating the teaching of anal sex to 11-year-olds in turn prompted other Facebook participants to join in a barrage of insults and outright lies about and threats to Jones, comments that expanded on Thames’s accusations.
Lunsford and Thames, of course (as might be expected), smugly plastered their victory all over their respective Facebook pages.”