RSS
Home
The absence--or presence--of malice
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Malice appears to be just an ordinary word but it is such a juicy word it not only made it into the realm of legal jargon, it also is the name of rock bands, movies, comic book characters and rappers. The very sound of the word conjures up a sinister character lurking in the shadows; just waiting for that moment when he can strike and, with an evil laugh, draw first blood.
Even legal parlance, with its cold and objective rationality, cannot avoid using words like hatred and ill will when defining the term malice. In the law, malice starts with a state of mind: one that intentionally, without any excuse, inflicts an injury.
Courts have struggled to find unemotional words to define malice and they will use phrases like “A conscious violation of the law which operates to the prejudice of another person.” Realistically speaking, the determined villain in any number of movies or video games fit’s the picture pretty well.
When Malice meets Comments it finds a home in libel and slander. In libel, it is the intentional publishing of false information about someone and knowing at the time it is published that it is not true.
A private person can be defamed and sue the publisher (whether that publisher be a major TV station, a newspaper or your neighborhood blogger) because they were negligent (meaning here that the commenter just didn’t get his facts straight or didn’t check out the whole story) or because someone knowingly published false information.
But a public figure can sue only if there is malice, meaning the publisher used the false statements--aka lies--and published them while knowing they were false.
Of course, the publisher can say, “Hey, I asked my barber, George, and he told me that Kobe Bryant had a secret second family.” Yeah, Right. The courts have closed up this loophole by calling this type of fact checking a reckless disregard for the truth. And as far as the courts are concerned,having such a reckless disregard for whether or not something is true or false is the same as knowing a lie is a lie.
More About:
defamation
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
So what makes somebody a reasonable person, anyway? Like it or not, there are some requirements to being reasonable. We expect a reasonable person to …
We’ve all heard of the reasonable mistake, (like shouting hello to a stranger who looks just like an old friend) or the reasonable accident …
