Nowhere to hide, libel not covered by 1st Options

[lilburne]

Court orders hand over of identity of anonymous wikipedia editors.

http://lawkipedia.com/social-networking/id...-amendment.html

libel not covered by 1st - apparently.

[Kelly Martin]

Seems to me that defamation is an intentional tort, and as we all know, children as young as three have been held liable for intentional torts. Don't think that the "underagedness" of the defamer is an issue here, Master Seren. Perhaps you should edumacate yourself on the law before you open your furry little yap.

(Oh, wait, you think "education" is something you can get from Wikipoopia. Forget I said that.)

[Malleus]

Seems to me that defamation is an intentional tort, and as we all know, children as young as three have been held liable for intentional torts. Don't think that the "underagedness" of the defamer is an issue here, Master Seren. Perhaps you should edumacate yourself on the law before you open your furry little yap.

(Oh, wait, you think "education" is something you can get from Wikipoopia. Forget I said that.)

Children as young as three? Really? Who in their right mind would attempt to sue a three-year-old child through the civil courts?

This post has been edited by Malleus:

[Newyorkbrad]

Seems to me that defamation is an intentional tort, and as we all know, children as young as three have been held liable for intentional torts. Don't think that the "underagedness" of the defamer is an issue here, Master Seren. Perhaps you should edumacate yourself on the law before you open your furry little yap.

(Oh, wait, you think "education" is something you can get from Wikipoopia. Forget I said that.)

Children as young as three? Really? Who in their right mind would attempt to sue a three-year-old child through the civil courts?

Usually, someone who's discovered that the three-year-old child is covered by his or her parents' insurance policy.

[Kelly Martin]

Usually, someone who's discovered that the three-year-old child is covered by his or her parents' insurance policy.

Tut, tut, Brad, you know as well as I that you can't write an insurance policy that pays out on intentional torts, at least not the traditional ones. The children who get sued in intentional tort are typically the ones with large inheritances, or at least anticipated inheritances, against which the judgment debt can be collected, in the future if not immediately.

[Newyorkbrad]

Usually, someone who's discovered that the three-year-old child is covered by his or her parents' insurance policy.

Tut, tut, Brad, you know as well as I that you can't write an insurance policy that pays out on intentional torts, at least not the traditional ones. The children who get sued in intentional tort are typically the ones with large inheritances, or at least anticipated inheritances, against which the judgment debt can be collected, in the future if not immediately.

Read the context again, please, Kelly: I was answering Malleus's question, which was about suits against very young children (such as the one discussed in the New York Times article that NuclearWarfare linked, which involved a 4-year-old who knocked over an elderly person while riding her bicycle on the sidewalk). Those are negligence cases; there are obviously no cases where a toddler has been sued for defamation, and I don't know who the youngest person who has held amenable to a suit for that tort would be.

That being said, defamation is indeed covered under some insurance policies; many newspapers, for example, have such coverage (Googling "libel insurance" yields plenty of hits), although I don't know what qualifications and exceptions the coverage might have. And I believe there are cases holding that defamation is covered under some traditional homeowners' policies, depending on the wording of the policy. There are certain intentional torts that are uninsurable (fraud is the main example, and in some states breach of the fiduciary duty of loyalty, as opposed to the fiduciary duty of care), but for better or worse, defamation isn't always one of them.