Miscellaneous Forum

SLAPP = Strategic lawsuit against public participation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLAPP


Lots & lots happening in Canada these days. Sad.

<Lots & lots happening in Canada these days. Sad.>

I agree, even as a visitor.

Just reading the weekend newspapers:

-Anti-sealing ship (The Sea Shepherd) stays tied up. Judge rejects Crown bid to force owners to pay for vessel's release..... The Sea Shepherd society says it plans to bill the federal government CAD 1000 for every day the ship is held.

-Lost in Space (The Canadarm). "You can't declare something of strategic national importance and than choose not to support it" (it being Canada's Space Industry).


PJ

This also has interesting recent developments for Travel review sites. Where some people misuse the threat of lawsuit to silence negative reviews. SLAPP can protect people...

A local newspaper use my Hengelo intro picture without asking, so I wrote them an angry email ending with: I don't like to ask the VT staff to take legal action.

Now, is that a case of SLAPP?


PJ

Hmm...Not really. SLAPP is more like. You stay in a hotel, and the service is awful, they over charge you and they refuse to honor their commitments. You write a review aboiut them. They threaten you with legal action. Using SLAPP you can claim they are trying to silence your public participation.

I don't think so. My understanding of a SLAPP is that it's a generally frivolous lawsuit launched by someone with deep pockets to tie up in court someone with much smaller pockets.

... and drag it on for years and get dismissed due to a "procedural" error.

PJ

Well I think the deal is that if someone threatens you with legal action you can just say...hey they are trying to silence me and throw out the potential legal action by then.

I'll give it a try on the present hotel I'm in.

I just get excuses like: Yes, it's a new system .... More guest have the same problem ... bla bla bla

I'll ask for the manager today and will ask him how he/she will fix the problem for me (otherwise I have to add something negative on the hotel; and I rather just write positive).

And it's all about the parking garage card reader.

PJ