There is a major verdict out of Texas where a mother and an attorney were ordered to pay millions for perpetuating an alleged hate crime hoax that was eagerly spread by the mainstream media. Asher Vann, a minor at the time, was labeled a racist maniac who tortured SeMarion Humphrey, his black classmate, with other classmates. After the court found that the allegations were false and intentional infliction of emotional distress, the same media that spread the story remained conspicuously silent. Crickets.
Major media outlets from NBC to CBS to the Daily Mail published the account of how Humphrey was tortured, shot with BB guns, and forced to drink urine during a sleepover. The NAACP and Black Lives Matter protested the lack of action from officials ignoring the alleged racist attack.
Good Morning America aired a segment featuring ABC host Linsey Davis, who promoted a GoFundMe account that raised approximately $120,000 for “therapy and private schooling.” In her interviews, Humphrey’s mother, Summer Smith, called Vann “evil” and described his depravity to enabling reporters like Linsey Davis.
Some, however, were not convinced. Washington Free Beacon reported that Smith spent less than $1,000 of the donated funds toward her son’s schooling while spending funds on items including a designer dog, dining, travel, beauty products, liquor and vapes.
Parents rallied around the Humphrey family and held events at the school.
Eventually, the case against Vann was submitted to a grand jury, despite later testimony by Plano Police Department officer Patricia McClure that she did not believe there was probable cause for any charge. Given the pressure campaign, it was given to a grand jury anyway. The grand jurors then refused to indict.
Vann sued and testified that the alleged racist act occurred at a camp that was caught in a snowstorm. Unsupervised, the teenagers engaged in dumb games and pranks. He said that, after unsuccessfully searching for small game, they decided to shoot each other. All of the kids were wearing thick clothing and shot each other with the BB guns for fun. He testified that Humphrey participated in the game with everyone else in both being shot and shooting others.
The urine was described as a prank that was played on various boys, according to Vann, but no one actually drank from the cup.
Under the common law, the elements of the tort of an intentional infliction of emotional distress require a plaintiff must show that the defendant “(a) intentionally engaged in some conduct toward the plaintiff considered outrageous and intolerable in that it offends the generally accepted standards of decency and morality; (b) with the purpose of inflicting emotional distress or where any reasonable person would have known that such would result; and (c) that severe emotional distress resulted as a direct consequence of the defendant’s conduct.”
A racially diverse jury handed down a verdict against Humphrey’s mother and the family attorney, Kim Cole. The inclusion of the lawyer in the verdict makes this a relatively rare case.
Smith and Cole were ordered to pay $3.2 million in damages to Vann, now an adult in college. Both the mother and the lawyer were ordered to pay $1,599,000.00.
The case raised obvious analogies to other cases that were eagerly promulgated by the media but later disproven, such as the Jussie Smollett hoax.
The Smollett story of MAGA-associated racists roaming the streets of Chicago was irresistible as politicians like Nancy Pelosi and others piled on. ABC’s Robin Roberts gave Smollett an interview that was breathtaking in its lack of substantive questions or even curiosity about glaring red flags in his account. Roberts described Smollett as “bruised but not broken” and nodded as he described his narrow escape from being lynched in America. She concluded the interview with “Beautiful, thank you, Jussie.”
The Texas case followed the same trajectory as the media built up the story and then went silent as countervailing facts were produced by the family.
Once again, the role and liability of counsel Cole is particularly interesting. We discussed a claim of defamation by counsel in the Depp-Heard case.
Attorneys are protected by absolute privilege in court in making harmful and even false statements. This privilege is best stated in the Restatement of Law (Second) of Torts section 586 “to publish defamatory matter concerning another in communications preliminary to a proposed judicial proceeding, or in the institution of, or during the course and as part of, a judicial proceeding in which he participates as counsel, if it has some relation to the proceedings.”
However, it also means that “statements made during an occasion outside a judicial proceeding are not covered.” Thus, while “[t]he duties and actions of a lawyer in representing a client are not confined to judicial proceedings,” the court ruled that interviews with a reporter would fall outside of the privilege. Most courts reject the notion of an absolute privilege while considering a more limited possible privilege for out-of-court statements. See Kennedy v. Cannon, 229 Md. 92, 182 A.2d 54, 58 (1962) (the “absolute privilege will not attach to counsel’s extrajudicial publications, related to the litigation, which are made outside the purview of the judicial proceeding”).
Likewise, actions by counsel can be deemed as the intentional infliction of emotional distress as well as privacy violations. This can be a dangerously fluid line, since all litigation causes some degree of emotional distress, particularly in tort cases, where reputations are attacked. Moreover, lawyers often assist clients in seeking donations to GoFundMe accounts, which may help defray legal fees. Such public advocacy, however, entails a greater risk of liability.
The key in this case was the actions taken outside of the court as well as the alleged falsity of the underlying representations.
The targeting of a minor is particularly notable in this case and raises memories of the disgraceful media attacks on Nick Sandmann, who was falsely accused of abusing a Native American activist in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Despite various media organizations correcting the story and some settling with Sandmann, some in the media continued to attack him.
The Vann case is likely to be reviewed by many lawyers outside Texas. It is a case that could be replicated in future cases involving lawyers accused of fueling reckless or inflammatory public claims. The fact that the damages were evenly divided between the mother and the lawyer shows the level of culpability that the jury assigned to the role of the lawyer.
Here is the jury verdict form: Jury-Verdict
Objective truth is a bourgeois, racist concept anyway, right? Anything is righteous if being done to fight evil.
Professor Turley forgot to cite the case of the “reporter”/commentator that attacked the cute little kid that wore face paint to a football game and was called a racist little boy. The writer ended his career and I think even the publication went down.
Can one come up with a good reason for some intrepid reporter NOT investigating to find the hoax in order to break the counter story other than the desire to be part of the gang exposing how racist the country, and particularly Texas, is? It would not have taken much to get to the bottom of a story about bored boys engaging in silly behavior and yet none of the mainstream media did. Incidents like this just show how irredeemably broken our current media complex remains.
Sad, really.
“Can one come up with a good reason for some intrepid reporter NOT investigating to find the hoax in order…” Yes! Under staffed.
I’m all for citizen journalists. However, they like the MSM have no ethics.
“The case raised obvious analogies to other cases . . .”
Including the most horrific, unjust one of all: The Duke lacrosse hoax.
It is shocking that to this day, the pot-banger of all media pot-bangers — Nancy Grace — is still considered a legitimate source for anything.
Maybe you should destroy her reputation.
The publication of speculative charges is a calculated maneuver designed to inflate audience numbers. These entities perform a hollow ‘compassion for the victim’ to burnish their brand, knowing full well that while the accusations will eventually fade, the ‘good guy’ image remains. Even as litigation ruins lives over years, these organizations are unfazed; they simply treat the cost of lawsuits as a routine operational expense.
Is your comment intended to indicate that all MSM reporting is a lie, a fraud intended to destroy peoples lives? Have you ever run a media business? Didn’t think so. I’m guessing you hate liberals.
You should write poetry for profit.
Clearly the demand for racial hate crimes exceeds the supply.
If America is such an irredeemably racist nation, why does it seem the majority of these turn out to be hoaxes in the end? And it’s not just Smollet. There was the “Nascar Noose” that turned out to just be a pull rope that had been there for years. Then there was the BLM activist at UDel who sent racist messages to herself in order to claim victimhood. It just goes on…
How many hate crimes took place since the great emancipator took control?
According to the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, fewer than 50 false hate crime reports were identified between 2016 and 2018 out of an estimated 21,000 total hate crime cases—representing less than 1% of all reports. This finding is supported by other analyses indicating that false reports are statistically negligible. Source: https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu.
Majority you say? I guess Americans really do hate each other.
Out of your 21,000 hate crimes how many were against Jews and how many weren’t publicized (ignored) just because they were against Jews vs how much ink any claim against a so-called attack against a Black person received?
I am not saying that there aren’t the occasional hate crime against Blacks, but the hatred today is almost exclusively against Jews. Also, there is no “Islamophobia” happening to any extent at all. This is as fake as the Trans-genocide garbage.
We see real racism on full display, but it’s by the far left. They never miss a chance to cry racism, while lying about what actually happened. Obama did nothing but fuel the flames of racial division, despite being the first black elected to the highest office in the land. Democrats in the media fan the flames. Outrage wins elections. “Let your rage fuel you.”
“We see real racism on full display, but it’s by the far left.” Nothing like some lying to start the day eh racist?
Isn’t your moniker “anti-racist” code for liberal?
Ah, the parasite is awake and ruining his own day with stupidity.
Can you post a link that “display” please.
OK, now next- will the media be opened up to be sued, for running with a story that had not been vetted for accuracy?
The media was sued by Sandman, but they failed to learn from that experience. Perhaps they will learn if they are sued again. Perhaps. They seem to be dug in to confirming their own prejudices.
Learn? Even worse, is that you have failed your fellow Americans… the black ones, the sick ones, the poor ones, just because they’re have a liberal mindset.
If anyone has dug in, its your biases and hate towards Americans.
One would think that after the Smollett and Sandman debacles, the MSM would have learned to investigate and report the facts more thoroughly and honestly. But alas, some reporters are unable or unwilling to put their own personal biases aside when reporting a story that can be twisted to confirm their biases. In this case, the jury got it right. It remains to be seen if lessons will be learned. Both the MSM and the attorney have failed in their respective professional obligations.
would have learned…
unable or unwilling to put their own personal biases aside…
can be twisted to confirm their biases…
You just described yourself and your MAGA cohorts.
F politics, lets go after all lawyers. Even worse than politicians and liberals.
Anon is one the something.