Chris McGrath, an author who self-published a book called The Attempted Murder of God: Hidden Science You Really Need to Know under the pseudonym of “Scrooby” is now suing an Amazon reviewer, Vaughan Jones, who apparently maligned his book. Mr. Jones also outed Mr. McGrath as the man behind Scrooby in the reviews section on Read More
Former New York Governor, Attorney General, and CNN host Eliot Spitzer—who The Observer had a nice chat with last week over the recent rage directed at Wall Street’s ratings agencies—is this week being sued for libel over a year-old column for Slate. Read More
New York Magazine faces a million-dollar libel suit over a piece Andrew Goldman wrote in 2009, “Extreme Birth,” about Manhattan celebrity midwife Cara Muhlhahn, according to Jezebel’s Irin Carmon.
Ms. Muhlhahn claims that Mr. Goldman painted her as reckless, but New York has filed a motion to dismiss on the grounds that writing Read More
Inside The Observer this week are two bookends on the state of journalism.
On the one end, an important story by media writer John Koblin, noting the fact that libel cases have fallen sharply in recent years. The lead anecdote is Time Inc.’s libel lawyer, Robin Bierstedt, who is retiring Read More
When Robin Bierstedt joined the Time Inc. legal department in 1983, there were 20 active libel cases pending against the company. In her 27-year career, she has taken on dozens of spurned public figures, officials and organizations (hello, Church of Scientology!), all of whom had a serious legal beef with Time Inc.
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