Northwest Iowa — Thirty different media organizations have filed a “friend of the court” brief in the $77-million lawsuit filed by U.S. Congressman Devin Nunes from California (who has ties to northwest Iowa). The brief says the ruling sets a bad precedent.
California Congressman Devin Nunes filed the suit in Federal District Court in Sioux City over what his lawsuit contends was a “Hit Piece” authored by Esquire writer Ryan Lizza prior to the 2018 congressional elections.
Among other allegations, Nunes says the article falsely alleged that the Nunes family employed undocumented workers at their farm near Sibley.
The suit was dismissed in August 2020. But the 8th Circuit Court Of Appeals ruled in September that there are parts of the suit that deserve to be reconsidered.
The appeals court said that the allegation that Lizza was trying to get more people to read his article when he tweeted about it in 2019 has merit, and amounts to republication. They wrote, “The complaint here adequately alleges that Lizza intended to reach and actually reached a new audience by publishing a tweet about Nunes and a link to the article.” The judge writing the opinion stated, “In November 2019, Lizza was on notice of the article’s alleged defamatory implication by virtue of this lawsuit. The complaint alleges that he then consciously presented the material to a new audience.
The “friend of the court” brief filed by the media companies alleges that “Declaring that a hyperlink is a republication contradicts precedent, and will significantly restrict the flow of information to the public.” They feel that while this is a matter of an author tweeting about his own article, it sets the precedent that anyone tweeting a link or hyperlinking in another way could make them responsible for the content of whatever site they are linking to.
The brief also says, “Declaring that a pre-publication denial, alone, renders plausible an allegation of actual malice also contradicts precedent, and will significantly chill protected speech.”
The media companies responsible for the brief are asking the court for a re-hearing. While the list of media companies does include Iowa media outlets, the nearest ones to the Sibley area are based in Storm Lake and Sioux City.
