Sherrod to sue Breitbart

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center>
Sherrod plans to sue Breitbart</font size></center>

By the CNN Wire Staff
July 29, 2010


(CNN) -- Former Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod said Thursday she will pursue a lawsuit against conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart.

Breitbart posted an edited video clip of Sherrod appearing to say she discriminated against a white farmer looking for assistance. The clip showed her addressing a chapter of the NAACP.

"I will definitely do it," she said when asked whether she was considering legal action. Sherrod made her remarks during an appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in San Diego, California.

Breitbart "had to know that he was targeting me," Sherrod said. "At this point, he hasn't apologized. I don't want it at this point, and he'll definitely hear from me."

Breitbart did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He has said he released the Sherrod video because he believes it shows the NAACP itself tolerates racist behavior within its ranks -- an accusation that came after the civil rights group made a similar charge against the conservative Tea Party movement.

"This was not about Shirley Sherrod," Breitbart told CNN's John King.

Brent Bozell, head of the conservative Media Research Center, said Thursday Sherrod was the one who needed to apologize.

"Andrew Breitbart is going to be fine. He's done nothing wrong," Bozell said.

"I wonder if Ms. Sherrod, who is such a champion of transparency, will publicly disclose who is putting her up to this. And I also hope this champion of honesty will stop lying about Fox News," which has been accused of pushing the story before full details emerged, he said.

"I'm also waiting for Ms. Sherrod to publicly apologize for accusing anyone opposed to nationalized healthcare of being racist," Bozell said. "Last time I checked, that was more than half the country."

The controversy surrounding the clip led to a rush to judgment and Sherrod's forced resignation. However, it was later determined that her speech, unedited, focused on how the incident changed her outlook and made her realize people should move beyond race. The incident occurred 24 years ago, before Sherrod began working for the USDA.

She received an official apology from the USDA and a phone call from President Barack Obama once the full text of her remarks came to light.

Sherrod has since been offered another position at the Agriculture Department.

Obama said earlier Thursday that Sherrod "deserves better than what happened last week." Speaking at a National Urban League conference in Washington, Obama called the claim of racism against her "bogus."

"Many are to blame" for the reaction that followed, he said, "including my own administration."

Her whole story, Obama said he told Sherrod, "is exactly the kind of story we need to hear in America (because) we all have our biases."


http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/07/29/sherrod.lawsuit.breitbart/?hpt=Sbin

 

[Chitownheadbusa]

Good fucking move!!

All that "angry Black folk" stuff, hooping and hollering & marching is passe.

If you all really wanna fight fire with fire with these dumbfounded White folks, hit these mofo where it really hurts them, in their pocket books.

Exploiters of Black strife like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton found this out a long time ago. Thats how they accumulated the money that they have.

What im stil tripping about is how the Obama Admin used that same misconstrued info that Andrew Breitbart put out as a basis for their decision to tell Sharrod to step down.

Talk about being weak.

If she could....she shoulda considered suing them as well.

 

[thoughtone]

Some in the media are claiming that Breitbart cannot be sued since he is a blogger and not the press. I know Faux Snooze uses right wing activists as creditable sources, but bloggers are not under the same standards as the press. However, there have been instances when bloggers have been convicted of slander. This sounds like a good case.

 

[nittie]

Hopefully she's just enjoying her moment in the spotlight and will not sue this guy. Zealots are uniting behind Breitbart there's no telling what they might do. Obama fell for the okey doke he should squash it by inviting them over for a beer, maybe barbque some hotdogs and hamburgers, encourage them to kiss and make up.

 

[thoughtone]

Hopefully she's just enjoying her moment in the spotlight and will not sue this guy. Zealots are uniting behind Breitbart there's no telling what they might do. Obama fell for the okey doke he should squash it by inviting them over for a beer, maybe barbque some hotdogs and hamburgers, encourage them to kiss and make up.

They have you intimidated too I see!

 

[Gunner]

I vote sue him. He has a right to free speech. But with that free speech one has to live with what he puts out to the public. Some media heads chose not to air the video considering the history of the source.

 

[nittie]

They have you intimidated too I see!

I'm a anarchist nothing intimidates me, I laugh at authority, hahaha.

 

[STICKYpreCUM]

Fox News = POLITICAL PORN,,,,,,,thats right,,,,,,,,,,,,POLITICAL PORN,,,,,,,,,,problably even worst than porn. Lies, fear baiting, half-truths, and character assassination are worst than porn. This network would rather see someone's (Mrs Shirley Shorrod) Life and Lively-hood destroyed to make political points against the President of the United States. Their main objective is a shameful attempt to destroy the presidency of Barrack Obama. Fox News,,,,, THE POLITICAL PORN network

 

[thoughtone]

source: Huffington Post

Shirley Sherrod Sues Andrew Breitbart Over Video


Shirley Sherrod has filed a lawsuit against Andrew Breitbart over a video released by the conservative personality that lead to her ouster as an official at the USDA.

Breitbart was served on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), according to the New York Times: "In the suit, which was filed in Washington on Friday, Ms. Sherrod says the video has damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work."

The video first gained widespread public attention when it was posted on Breitbart's BigGovernment.com. The two-minute, 38-second clip was widely received as an admission by Sherrod, who is African American, that she had discriminated against a white farmer. Under immediate pressure from the Obama administration, Sherrod resigned from her position as the USDA's director of rural development in Georgia.

When a full 43-minute copy of the video surfaced, additional context turned the story into one of reconciliation. Sherrod had actually saved the man's farm and started a lifelong friendship. The NAACP, which publicly condemned Sherrod's speech shortly after it was posted on BigGovernment.com, soon issued a retraction and said that they were "snookered."

The White House also begged for forgiveness and offered her a "unique opportunity." Sherrod declined the offer to return to the Agriculture Department.

A statement issued on his website says Breitbart "categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech and, to reiterate, looks forward to exercising his full and broad discovery rights." The statement also says that Larry O'Connor, the head of Breitbart.tv, was named in the suit.

 

[Fuckallyall]

Breitbart is a shithead, but I do not think that a bad quote is actionable.

 

[QueEx]

Breitbart is a shithead, but I do not think that a bad quote is actionable.

Which one ?

QueEx

 

[Fuckallyall]

Which one ?

QueEx

The excerpt that Breitbart first "reported".

 

[thoughtone]

source: Forbes



Ex-USDA official's case against blogger to begin

07.19.11, 03:02 AM EDT<!-- DATE --> <!-- JQUERY --><SCRIPT type=text/javascript src="http://images.forbes.com/scripts/jquery/jquery.js"></SCRIPT><SCRIPT type=text/javascript src="http://images.forbes.com/scripts/jquery/jquery.dimensions.js"></SCRIPT><SCRIPT type=text/javascript src="http://images.forbes.com/scripts/jquery/ui.core.js"></SCRIPT><SCRIPT type=text/javascript src="http://images.forbes.com/scripts/jquery/ui/ui.tabs.js"></SCRIPT><SCRIPT type=text/javascript src="http://images.forbes.com/scripts/story/behavior.js"></SCRIPT>

WASHINGTON (AP) — A year to the day after Shirley Sherrod was ousted from the Agriculture Department, the former government employee is still seeking vindication.

On July 19, 2010, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack ordered Sherrod's resignation from her job as a Georgia rural development official after learning about a video of Sherrod making supposedly racist remarks. On Tuesday, the U.S. District Court will hold the first hearing in Sherrod's defamation case against the conservative blogger who posted the video.

The video on Andrew Breitbart's website turned out to be edited, and when Sherrod's full speech to an NAACP group earlier that year came to light, it became clear that her remarks about an initial reluctance to help a white farmer were not racist but an attempt at telling a story of racial reconciliation. Once that was obvious to everyone, Sherrod received public apologies from the administration — even from President Barack Obama himself — and an offer to come back to the USDA, which she declined.

Sherrod is now suing Breitbart, his employee Larry O'Connor and an unnamed "John Doe" defendant for "defamation, false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress." Sherrod's lawyers say the unnamed defendant is the person who they believe passed the video on to Breitbart.

The suit asks for damages but does not specify an amount. The complaint says the incident has affected Sherrod's sleep and caused her back pain. It contends that she was damaged by having her "integrity, impartiality and motivations questioned, making it difficult (if not impossible) for her to continue her life's work assisting poor farmers in rural areas" even though she was invited to come back to the Agriculture Department.

Lawyers for Breitbart and O'Connor have called the suit an assault on free speech and charge that Sherrod is seeking "revenge" on Breitbart because she does not like his politics. In one brief, they quote Sherrod saying on CNN shortly after she was ousted that Breitbart is "one person I'd like to get back at."

Breitbart and O'Connor have asked that the case be dismissed under a new District of Columbia statute that aims to prevent the silencing of critics through lawsuits. They also have asked for it to be moved to California, where they both reside.

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon is also expected to look at court jurisdiction. Sherrod originally filed the case in the District of Columbia Superior Court, but Breitbart's lawyers asked to have it tried in federal court. Leon's decision to hold a procedural hearing in the case Tuesday may be a sign that he intends to keep it there.

Reached by telephone Monday, Sherrod said she couldn't talk because of the ongoing case. In a statement released when the suit was filed in February, she said the case is "about how quickly, in today's Internet media environment, a person's good name can become 'collateral damage' in an overheated political debate."

Breitbart's original posting last July showed clips of a March 2010 speech to an NAACP group in which Sherrod talked about her reluctance to help a white farmer who came to her more than two decades ago when she worked at a farm aid nonprofit group. The video was posted amid ongoing friction between the NAACP and the tea party movement, each of which were accusing the other of having racist elements among their ranks.

Sherrod said the man was acting "superior" to her and she debated whether to help him.

"I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farmland, and here I was faced with helping a white person save their land," Sherrod said in the speech. "I didn't give him the full force of what I could do."

Breitbart said at the time that the video showed the NAACP condoning racist comments from a government official.

The full video, however, shows Sherrod explaining to the audience how she eventually became friends with the farmer and helped him save his land from foreclosure.

Breitbart has not stayed away from controversy since the Sherrod incident. In May, he posted a lewd photo of Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., that had been captured from the congressman's Twitter account. The posting and resulting media firestorm led Weiner to resign from Congress.

As for Sherrod, she has been in recent talks with the Agriculture Department about doing contract work helping with minority outreach. Vilsack has said he wants to use community organizations to make sure federal funding is reaching people who have historically complained of discrimination.

 

[thoughtone]

source: HULIQ

Breitbart must face Shirley Sherrod's defamation suit

Andrew Breitbart has to meet Shirley Sherrod in court and respond to her defamation suit.

Breitbart filed a motion to dismiss Sherrod’s defamation suit. But the US District Court in Washington DC refused Breitbart’s request to dismiss.

Sherrod filed the suit in February of 2011, a year after the Breitbart tapes seeped its way into mainstream media. Breitbart’s tape, edited to paint Sherrod as racist and a reflection of NAACP racial behaviors, resulted in Sherrod’s dismissal.

Breitbart maintained that he never meant to hurt Sherrod, but to place heat on the NAACP. Sherrod was fired on the spot by Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a direct order from the White House, she wrote in her complaint.

Sherrod also said she was forced to pull over and resign from her position via Blackberry.
A year later, she filed a defamation suit against Breitbart and his partner. But Sherrod didn’t file and EEOC suit against the federal government for unlawful termination.

She was offered a newer position by the feds, but declined.

Breitbart cited Anti-SLAPP laws in hopes of dismissing Sherrod’s pending lawsuit. SLAPP laws are meant to bully critics into silence with threats of a lawsuit.

DC’s Anti-SLAPP laws allowed Breitbart to counter Sherrod’s defamation suit by claiming that his work was done with regards to further rights of free speech and that his works involved matters of public concern, which thus enabled Breitbrat to legally file a special motion to dismiss.

Breitbart’s tape was edited to portray Shirley Sherrod as a detriment to the success of white farmers. The edited video suggests that Sherrod gave preferential treatment to African American farmers over white farmers.

But the full tape reveals a moment of enlightenment for Sherrod. The video reveals a woman who learned a valuable lesson about racism and bitterness after she helped a White farmer in need.

That farmer did reach out to news agencies and reveal that Sherrod had helped him and that she was not a person who executed power or decisions with regard to race. News media also retracted the story and apologized, but it was too late. Sherrod was a household name and unceremoniously fired from the Department of Agriculture.

But US District Court Judge Richard Leon denied Breitbart’s motion to dismiss. Leon said Breitbart missed the deadline to file a motion to dismiss by two weeks and thus the lawsuit will proceed.

Breitbart’s mistake with Sherrod hasn’t deterred the media vigilante. His brand of journalism is credited for outing ex-New York Representative Anthony Weiner. Weiner told media his account had been hacked. But Breitbart’s media was behind the exposed Weiner photos.

Weiner, disgraced while in public office, was forced to resign.

 

[thoughtone]

Perhaps!!! But, on the other hand, I believe that we're the most forgiving people on the planet.

source: Politico

Shirley Sherrod seeks Breitbart's widow as substitute in defamation lawsuit

A year and a half after the death of Andrew Breitbart, Shirley Sherrod is taking legal action to have the conservative journalist's widow substitute as defendant in the Sherrod vs. Breitbart defamation lawsuit.

The motion, which Sherrod filed in Washington's U.S. District Court last month, seeks to make Susannah Breitbart responsible for providing financial recovery for "libel and slander" caused by the Breitbart-publicized videos that led to her resignation in 2010. Mrs. Breitbart objected to the motion on Saturday.

Sherrod, a former Agriculture Department employee, was forced to resign after Breitbart publicized videos from a 2010 NAACP speech in which Sherrod appeared to make racist remarks about white people. However, the videos were edited, and a subsequent review of Sherrod's full remarks showed her saying she had come to reject racial stereotyping. She was ultimately offered official apologies and a new position with USDA.

In Feb. 2011, Sherrod brought a defamation lawsuit against Breitbart, his aide Larry O'Connor, and an unnamed defendant, all of whom were believed to be involved in the publicizing of the video. In the suit, Sherrod claimed the video had damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work. Breitbart and O'Connor sought to dismiss the suit under an anti-SLAPP law, but were unsuccessful.

On March 1, 2012, Breitbart died of heart failure at the age of 43. Yet Sherrod's case was allowed to continue, while both O'Connor and the unnamed 'John Doe' remained as defendants. Breitbart's name also remains as a defendant -- and will until the courts sort of Sherrod's latest motion.

The motion is "to substitute Mrs. Breitbart in place of her late husband as a defendant in this matter."

From Mrs. Breitbart's response:

7. On September 18, 2013, Plaintiff filed the Motion to substitute Mrs. Breitbart in place of her late husband as a defendant in this matter.

8. As grounds for the Motion, Plaintiff asserts that Mrs. Breitbart may be substituted as a defendant in place of Andrew Breitbart (deceased) pursuant to California law, including California Probate Code §13550.

[...]

10. Plaintiff appears to seek recovery from Mrs. Breitbart in excess of amounts allowed pursuant to controlling California law, including inter alia Code of Civil Procedure § 377.42 and California Probate Code §§ 550-555.

11. Mrs. Breitbart objects to the motion to substitute her in place of her late husband as a defendant in this matter to the extent that Plaintiff is seeking recovery as set forth in Paragraph 10 herein, and, hereby fully reserves all rights, remedies, claims and defenses to the claims alleged by Plaintiff in this action, including without limitation, her rights and defenses under California law, to prevent Plaintiff from seeking to recover punitive or other unavailable damages or relief against Mrs. Breitbart or any of her children.

WHEREFORE, Mrs. Breitbart, as a successor to Andrew Breitbart (deceased), respectfully objects to the motion to substitute her in place of her late husband as a defendant in this matter to the extent that Plaintiff is seeking to recover as set forth in Paragraph 10 herein.
​

 

[thoughtone]

source: Politico

Judge rips feds in Sherrod-Breitbart lawsuit

A federal judge delivered a severe tongue-lashing to a Justice Department lawyer Thursday, slamming the Obama Administration for its handling of demands for government records in the libel lawsuit fired Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod filed against conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart.

During a 40-minute hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon repeatedly ripped into the government and DOJ trial counsel David Glass for resisting requests from both sides in the case for government files and e-mails that might be of use in the litigation. At one point, the judge snapped at Glass, ordering him to "sit right down."

Sherrod was forced to resign as a state rural development director for USDA in 2010 after Breitbart posted video clips online from a speech she gave earlier in the year at an NAACP event. The videos appeared to suggest that Sherrod was a racist. Within a matter of hours, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack dismissed her, acting in consultation with the White House.

When fuller context for Sherrod's remarks emerged, the administration offered to return her to her job, which she declined. In 2011, she sued Breitbart and his employee Larry O'Connor for defamation. Breitbart died unexpectedly in 2012, but his wife was substituted as a defendant in the suit.

At the outset of Thursday's hearing, Leon lit into Glass for filing a 21-page statement outlining the government's position—a filing submitted electronically just after midnight Thursday along with a stack of nine exhibits. The judge called it "a self-serving pleading, not requested by anyone" and repeatedly suggested it was filed for "public relations" reasons rather than because it might be useful to the court.

The case has drawn attention because of the subject matter and, more recently, because of indications that the Obama White House might assert executive privilege to block some of the parties' demands for information.

Glass said it was his idea to file with the court the legal document, which—citing a Supreme Court decision protecting records Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force—said the president shouldn't be forced now to make a decision on privileg.. "I assure you that public relations had absolutely nothing to do with it," he said of the filing (posted here).

When the lawyer apologized for any offense, the judge shot back: "It's not a question of being offended....I'm questioning your judgment....It appears you're doing it for other reasons."

"We are very frustrated by this discovery," Glass said, complaining about subpoenas from both Sherrod and a defendant in the case, Breitbart employee Larry O'Connor. "We are fully prepared to move to quash all this discovery if it is not cut back substantially.....It makes absolutely no different why [she] was appointed to her job or what skeletons she may have in her closet."

"The documents sought from us are completely irrelevant to this matter," the DOJ lawyer said, expressing additional frustration that there were now signs the parties might seek deposition of figures like Vilsack. "The government has done nothing [connected] to this case, with the sole exception of offering Ms. Sherrod her job back," Glass said.

The judge seemed further annoyed by Glass's claim that dealing with the requests was burdensome for the government. Leon proceeded to require Glass to outline all the meetings and emails he'd had related to the case. Glass said he'd met with the parties once for about an hour and exchanged 30 or 40 emails with them since October. He also said he'd had contacts with USDA lawyers and lawyers at the White House.

When Glass tried to make a follow-up to his initial presentation, Leon snapped: "You sit right down. I'm not calling you up here....In my world, [that's] not a lot of effort to work things out."

Attorneys for both Sherrod, O'Connor and Susannah Breitbart all described as baffling the government's assertion that government records were largely irrelevant to the case.

"These are the people who fired her," Sherrod lawywer Beth Williams said, adding that her client deserved to know what government officials were saying about her at the time of the firiing and how Andrew Breitbart's blog posts on the subject influenced them. "This case is about Ms. Sherrod losing her job because the defendants made her look like a racist."

"The relevance here is indisputable," O'Connor lawyer Mark Bailen added, claiming that the Justice Department was "presumptuously" deciding what the parties to the case needed.

Leon seemed to agree. "We call that the Casablanca syndrome.....Gambling?.....We'll deal with that," he said.

"This is not a typical case.....This case involves someone who was fired by a cabinet officer....The government is not going to be able to slow roll this case," the judge insisted.

"The notion that government has nothing to do with the case other than offering her her job back: it's crazy," Breitbart attorney Eric Dubelier said. "That's delusional."

The judge ordered both sides to submit plans for future discovery in the case by March 3. And the government to respond by March 13.

Leon said towards the end of the hearing that he's intent on getting the lawsuit to trial by the fall. However, O'Connor's lawyer said he hopes it will be tossed out before that.