If ever there were a waste of the legal system’s time, good offices and personnel, it is our current high-profile, shock jock defamation trial. Todd “MJ” Schnitt is suing Bubba the Love Sponge Clem for defamation. Or is it the other way around? Who cares? The case has been frothing for five years, and now it’s finally gross-out game on.
Clem would appear to have a winnable case. Schnitt’s a public figure, there was, arguably, no malice intended, and ostensibly defamatory statements can often be characterized as “pure opinions, rhetorical exaggeration or hyperbole that reasonable listeners would not consider to be true.”
Just one caveat. That part about “reasonable” listeners.