Loading ...First you have one blogger thrown out from a baseball game. Now another blogger has to pay, literally.
Yaman Salahi, an upcoming Berkeley junior, 
must pay $7,500 and $75 in legal fees to journalist Lee Kaplan for “interfering with business opportunities through defamation,” as the Daily Cal puts it.
Ouch. And we thought housing was rough.
Salahi started a blog called Lee Kaplan Watch to monitor Kaplan, who writes for FrontPageMag.com. There was an altercation, Kaplan found out about the blog, there was some hating, Kaplan sued for defamation and business interference, Salahi appealed the initial ruling and now we’re up to speed. It’s a long story.
Salahi best explains it on his own site:
bq. Lee Kaplan presented one allegation against me during the trial regarding defamation. In this regard he claimed that my website had the phrase “Lee Kaplan is a douchebag” and linked to another site with his face photoshopped on to gay porn.
What’s so wrong with gay porn, we ask? OK, so this is a serious issue. Not funny.
Salahi claims that Kaplan posted material saying that Salahi and the student group Students for Justice in Palestine “were affiliated with the American Nazi Party,” Salahi told the Daily Cal.
Isn’t that, well, um, kinda libelous too? But we’re not ones to point the finger of blame. Rather, we should learn from this, as Beetle suggests:
bq. [It] seems that the case being held in small claims court deprived him of many of the protections he would have received otherwise. We should note this as a lesson and try to keep these cases out of small claims court. We should also note that when being sued by many people, they know their way around the legal system well and we should definitely go find ourselves lawyers as early as possible, and try to use SLAPP law to cover the costs.
Salahi now has to come up with more than seven grand to pay the suit. He set up a PayPal donation, splitting the funds among his own cause and two other “progressive causes.”
Might we also suggest a new job opportunity?
Hmm. Perhaps not.
Court Rules in Favor of Writer in Suit Against Student Blogger [Daily Cal]
Homepage [Lee Kaplan Watch]
Houch [Beetle Beat]
Salahi discussion [UCB LJ Community]
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