Reminds me of the my son’s fourth grade teacher. When I met her she had one name… then after her divorce she reverted back to her maiden name. A couple of years later she married again and changed to his name. During the years my kids were in that school she had three different names.

“...[I]n the context of the Wired article, the statement “she lies” lacks the probably false content that is required to support a defamation action. Not only Plaintiff’s claim of the statement’s falsity invite an open-ended inquiry into Plaintiff’s veracity, but it also threatens to ensnare the Court in the thorny and extremely contentious debate over the perceived risks of certain vaccines, their theoretical association with certain diseases or syndromes, and, at bottom, which side of this debate has ‘truth” on their side. That is hardly the sort of issue that would be subject to verification based upon a “core of objective evidence.”

”The same prospect of litigation over unresolved – and perhaps unresolvable – scientific arguments was among the reasons that the accusation of lying in Faltas were deemed to be nonactionable.

”Plaintiff may wish to defend in Court the credibility of her conclusions about the danger of vaccines, the validity of the evidence she offers in support of those theories, and the policy choices that flow from those views – as well as her own credibility for advancing those positions. These, however, are academic questions that are not the sort of thing that courts or juries resolve in the context of a defamation action…”

My second most favorite part in the dismissal of complaint for “failure to state a claim” was about “the importance of ‘evaluating complaints early in the process’...as a way to deal with ‘the recognized problems created by ‘strike suits’ and the high cost of frivolous litigation.’”

I will have to arm wrestle isles for the first copy of Dr. Offit’s next book!