Cahill Gordon Again Eating "Veritas' Lunch" -- In New York State Trial Courts, On Amendment First...

We have smiled, and widely so, as we read the able lawyers for the Gray Lady (forgive the antiquated reference -- but it works well here). . . positively skewer the rank amateurs hired by Veritas, in both the federal and state level courts.

But it is true, that the judge in New York state is well outside the bounds of settled Supremes' precedents in maintaining a prior restraint order here (See, New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713, 715 (1971)). Without serious doubt, the 80 plus years of well-settled US law holds that -- if the NYT is libeling "Veritas" -- the remedy is damages, after the fact -- damages which NYT can clearly pay -- not gag orders. Not prior retraint. Here is the latest from the most recent of last week's letters:

. . .We write in response to Project Veritas’s December 15, 2021 letter [Dkt. 198], which argues that a New York Times article constitutes a party admission that all of Project Veritas’s newsgathering methods are at issue in this case, rather than just the content of its reporting about an alleged link between Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and voter fraud. That argument is clearly wrong. Even if a news organization could make party admissions through news reporters -- a proposition for which Project Veritas provides no support -- Project Veritas misconstrues the sentence on which it relies.

The article states that Project Veritas’s defamation claim stems from The Times’s “description of the group’s reporting practices.” Dkt. 199, at 1-2. The phrase “reporting practices” is simply a brief way of describing the reporting at issue in this case: whether Project Veritas made a deceptive report about alleged voter fraud in connection with Congresswoman Omar’s campaign. See Definition of “report,” Oxford University Press (2021), available at https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/report (last accessed Dec. 16, 2021) (defining “reporting” as “giv[ing] a spoken or written account of something that one has observed, heard, done, or investigated”). The phrase is not contrary to any of The Times’s legal arguments, and in any event, the legal memoranda have no bearing on any matter that may be adjudicated here for the simple reason that The Times has agreed not to use them in this litigation.

The Times respectfully urges the Court to promptly rule on the Order to Show Cause, as the interim order subjects The Times to irreparable harm with each day that it remains in effect. New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713, 715 (1971) (Black, J., concurring) (“[E]very moment’s continuance of the injunctions against these newspapers amounts to a flagrant, indefensible, and continuing violation of the First Amendment.”). . . .

Indeed -- onward, to watch a Bears / Vikings Monday night matchup, with a frosty mug of root beer, and a big ole' plate of turkey lasagne on tap. . . smile.

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