'Me, too'

For God's sake, you've wasted pages on this?

"Reveals" is used because it's clickbait.

Yes, it's the wrong word. So is "You'll never believe," but you'll probably find that, too.

 

Lawyer: Why are you suing Mrs. Witherspoon?
Director X: She slandered me!
Lawyer: In what way has she slandered you, sir?
Director X: She accused me of sexually assaulting her when she was 16!
Lawyer: Entering Exhibit A, text of Mrs. Witherspoon's speech of Oct. 17, 2017. Now, sir, please show me where in her speech she accused you.
Director X: Right there, she said "True disgust at the director who assaulted me when I was 16 years old and anger that I felt at the agents and the producers who made me feel that silence was a condition of my employment."
Lawyer: Were you the only director that worked with her when she was 16?
Director X: Um, no.
Lawyer: Why then do you think she is accusing you of sexually assaulting her?
Director X: Well, I worked with her that year.
Lawyer: Did you sexually assault her?
Director X: No.
Lawyer: Then for what reason would you think she is accusing you of sexual assault?
Director X: Obviously she means me!
Lawyer: But you say you didn't assault her. Why wouldn't you assume she meant one of the other directors? Do you have a guilty conscience?
Director X: No!
Lawyer: Did you do something you worry could have been misconstrued as sexual assault?
Director X: No!
Lawyer: Can you prove you did not sexually assault Mrs. Witherspoon?

Suddenly the guy is on trial for sexual assault and the lawyers are calling up every starlet he might have gazed at awkwardly to testify against him.

 

Oh, I'm not saying it's a good case. But it would probably survive some early stages of litigation, which is often the main goal.

 

Can one of our legal scholars explain false light charges? It seems they'd apply here more than libel.

 

False light is essentially libel without the harm element. In other words, you prove all the same things you do in libel with the exception that your reputation has actually been damaged. Instead you just have to show that a reasonable person would find the statement "highly offensive."

Because it is essentially libel lite - or a backdoor to libel when you can't prove libel - many states don't recognize it.

 

It's an easier bar to clear - you just have to imply that someone did something that they didn't do, rather than state it directly. For example, if you ran a story with Reese Witherspoon's story next to a huge photo of Steven Spielberg, but didn't make the connection explicit, a plaintiff might still have a colorable false light claim. I don't think every state recognizes it.

 

No, she said a crime happened. There is a difference, one that should matter in a discussion based so heavily in precise use of language.

 

And you're relying on unsupported speculation yet again.

 

Director X is not the witness who offers evidence that the statement is "of and concerning" Director X.

DX's Friend Y would have to testify that when (s)he heard the statement, they recognized Director X.

If the number of directors she worked with at age 16 is only three, then the two who did not assault her actually have decent libel claims because it is reasonable for anyone to infer from her statement that they are actually the ones who assaulted her. It's the group libel theory that generally only comes up with very small groups.

 

As others have pointed out to you many times, it could easily be a director she didn't work with, so you just attached three names to the accusation when there is a very good chance that none of them is the director she is talking about. That you keep dodging this possibility is yet another example of the rhetorical games I mentioned previously.

 

The two 1993 movies hit theaters when Witherspoon was 17, so they probably were shot when she was 16. Months of post-production work, etc., before the actual release date.

 

California does, though. I'm assuming that is where the hypothetical lawsuit would be filed.