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 jury found that the allegations constituted the 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 to 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
“But access to secured government spaces is administered. Not everyone is entitled to a seat in a White House briefing room or on Air Force One. That’s access, not speech.”
Precisely. I actually think that Trump & co were far too lenient when they began restricting MSM access. I think they should have stuck to them good & hard.
This comment addresses the good professor’s reference to media “crickets.”
Perhaps a new version of Restatement Torts (3rd ed.) needs a new chapter on Remedies to include addressing legacy/MSM.
It would address MSM’s need to beat the rush in reporting a story later found to be untrue/embellished.
A proposed Model Remedy:
(1) Compel prime-time announcement for viewers/readers to contact a 1-800 number to aver to viewing or reading the original untrue story or statement;
(2) Compel prime-time retraction, restatement, or correction, with reference to the above (1).
(3) Compel prime-time announcement for viewers/readers to contact a 1-800 number to aver to viewing or reading the RETRACTION OR CORRECTION of the original untrue story or statement;
(4) Subtract (3) from (1).
(5) Multiply remainder x nominal award, say, $1 each.
Example: 1,500,000 averred viewers/readers to the original untrue statement or story, minus 300,000 averred viewers/readers who claim to have read or seen the retraction or correction = a remainder of 1,200,000 viewers/readers x $1 each equals=$1,200,000 FINE imposed on media.
This should defeat 1A challenges and improve media accountability and standards for truth, balance, and fairness.
(I’m joking, but you get my point.)
Widely accepted as being referred to as the Mainstream Media (aka the MSM), the industry is transitioning to being referred to as (A) Mainstream Mistruths (B) Mockingbird Media or (C) Media Propaganda Machine. NEVER THE LESS, the classic standard of American Journalism has transitioned from an exemplary standard of reporting news and information of the world completely and accurately to one that lies in an open casket awaiting closure and burial of what had been.
. Slow down, oppression , suppression of the press by GOVERNMENT. A wise guy came along thinking I’ll flatter the government with POLITICAL PRESS. Government will not suppress that. Government encouraged it. Here’s what I want the press to report and they did.
There isn’t a single reporter or Democrat politician without DJT as evil tied into all speech and press. It’s tiring.
People stay away from all of it and life is so much better.
At the same time, another mother-son team was convicted for false claims of racially-motivated treatment in Georgia,
https://www.lawofficer.com/police-brutality-claims/
Here is a compilation of some of the cases of misuse of the justice system in defeating false claims of hate crimes. This list only covers alleged CRIMINAL matters of hate crimes –and doesn’t even touch the thousands upon thousands of civil and administrative cases brought by alleged “victims” seeking monetary reward and media visibility (e.g., EEOC claims and civil suits for wrongful termination or discriminatory adverse action).
https://www.fakehatecrimes.org/
The vast majority of these false claims are motivate by two factors: monetary award a/o media exposure and fame.
What’s missing. Oh the story I jumped on like a June Bug turns out to be perpetuated by just another charlatan trying to make a buck. When it turns out that the June Bug was a Stink Bug there’s never an apology. The bitterness of the Stink Bug remains just waiting to be wiped out by the sweet taste of the June Bug which never comes because they have lost the capability to tell one from the other.
It’s not the fault of the poor bird because he has no agenda to fulfill. They do.
To me this speaks to, and many will not like it, that modern parenting is a sheetshow and in another ten years these kids will just be basically feral. No society can continue this way.
The problem is less the laws, it’s the parents that sue at the drop of a hat, and often *win*. This is cultural rot, not legal rot. The press component is just another symptom. We really, really screwed the pooch beginning in the 90s in this regard, and we are going to have to reap the fruit.
Pray There are still people remaining that can even impart these ideas with alacrity when my generation is gone, beyond the legal and political, as we seem to be the last at present. I hope I’m wrong.
. It’s much worse. People don’t know that there are children who’ve never been to school. Parents aren’t sending them, there’s no check on it. There’s a generation coming up of true 3rd world people born and bred 🇺🇸.
With the attorney included in the decision, I wonder why she isn’t being charged with suborning perjury.
Judge Boseman is calling for the people sent back to Venezuela by Obama to be returned to the U.S.
Sorry wrong President. He’s ruling that illegals sent to Venezuela by Trump must be returned. Hmmm.
“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.”
This is why the media is accurately described as “Fake News”. Always has been and always will unless they are held to account. Next time, the media channels should be included in the liability, charges, and verdicts.
Anit-White is what the weird stream media is.
Finally, a validation of what all reasonable people know; that most of these racism stories are lies promoted by Democrat politicians and their Fake News media for money and votes.
Now let’s see how much money that Democrat propaganda media has to choke up for promoting those fake racism hoaxes.
Until both results are consistent and likely, they both will get away with perpetuating these lies, just like Smollett and BLM did with theirs.
We live in one of the most regulated environments in history. Contractors are licensed. Doctors answer to boards. Pilots are certified. Businesses operate under compliance rules every day. Yet when someone suggests journalism should have clearly defined professional standards tied to special access, suddenly that’s called censorship. That’s not consistent.
I’m not arguing for government control of speech. The First Amendment protects publication. Anyone can write whatever they want. But access to secured government spaces is administered. Not everyone is entitled to a seat in a White House briefing room or on Air Force One. That’s access, not speech.
If we’re going to claim standards are oppression, then let’s remove them everywhere. No licensing, no certification, no professional requirements for anything. But no serious person believes that. Standards exist because systems need them to function properly. Journalism holds extraordinary influence. It shapes reputations, public opinion, and policy debates. If anything, that makes professional standards more important, not less.
And we seem to forget why government exists in the first place. It exists to secure our unalienable rights. A free press is protected because it helps citizens defend those rights. But protection without responsibility eventually erodes trust, and without trust, a republic weakens. Free speech is protected. Special access is granted. Liberty requires both freedom and responsibility.
A note: where I’m from it’s inalienable…
The Declaration uses “unalienable,” but you understood my use to mean exactly the same thing.