Victory for Rachel Neuwirth vs. Richard Silverstein and Joel Beinin

Thank you to an anonymous reader for this wonderful news! Good luck to Rachel Neuwirth in her case against our infamous self-defamer.

Leftist, America-bashing and Self-hating Jew Richard Silverstein gets a legal kick in the pants

Wed, February 11, 2009, 13:12:PM

The first chapter of this story is captured here in a Media-First Amendment blog and narrated as a victory for free speech. Trust us when we say it had nothing to do with that and more to do with a leftist, America-bashing, self-hating Jew named Richard Silverstein using his blog to defame at will. And defame he does. Any one who opposes the Shariah-driven jihadists are attacked as racists and fascists and anyone who defends Israel is labeled a Zionist war criminal.

In a nutshell, this is the story, now updated. Rachel Neuwirth sued Richard Silverstein and Stanford professor Joel Beinin for libel. Silverstein had called Neuwirth, a respected journalist, a Kahanist-swine because she supported Israel's right to be free from Palestinian jihadi attacks--you see, in Richard Silverstein's perverse world (he has been diagnosed with an obsession for victimhood arising out of his claims of being an abused child even though his parents, he concedes, never sexually or physically abused him--rather, they would scold him when he was misbehaving and as such stunted his creative badness--or some such argument), the Jews of Israel have no right to defend themselves from jihad as long as they don't make peace on whatever terms the Palestinians (or Silverstein) demand.

Ms. Neuwirth had also sued because Silverstein had included on his blog a libel uttered by Beinin to Silverstein that Neuwirth had left a message on Beinin's phone machine threatening his life. Beinin and Silverstein knew that was false. Both men are avid Israel-bashers. This whole affair had been set up because Ms. Neuwirth had recently won a lawsuit arising out of an assault against her by another Leftist, Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, Director of Hillel at UCLA. The good rabbi (a term we use loosely at best) likes to protest for peace, Leftist causes and the "rights of Palestinians" but believes it is fine to beat up on women. The rabbi was forced to apologize and take anger management classes. When Silverstein heard that his little rabbi friend had been forced to cop a plea and admit publicly his shameful behavior, Silverstein went ballistic and started his crusade against Ms. Neuwirth.

Interestingly, Dean Hansell, the partner at the high-brow, white-collar law firm of Dewey and LeBoeuf, under whom SANE's David Yerushalmi worked more than 20 years ago, was representing Silverstein pro bono. This is interesting to us because when Silverstein defamed Mr. Yerushalmi as he has done to so many others, precisely because Mr. Yerushalmi stands for the proposition that Shariah and its jihad against America and the West must be stopped, Silverstein posted comments from Dean Hansell to the effect that Mr. Yerushalmi was "very conservative" way back then all in an effort to "prove" that Silverstein's wild-eyed accusations of "right-wing fascism" must be true.

But we digress. At the trial court level, Silverstein and his professor partner in defamation won their anti-SLAPP motion. An Anti-SLAPP law is a statutory device used in many states that allows courts to more quickly dispose of lawsuits alleging defamation but which are in reality Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation, or in other words, lawsuits to curb free speech.

Silverstein publicly paraded his "victory" like a peacock on display. He proudly draped himself in the skirt of the First Amendment.

Well, the day of reckoning has arrived. What Silverstein and Beinin did not count on was that Ms. Neuwirth, who really does wear a skirt, is a fighter and she was not about to roll over and allow the likes of these two Leftist, Israel-hating Jews to take advantage of her. Ms. Neuwirth appealed and she has won.

In a unanimous decision by the California Court of Appeals, Second Appellate District, the court held that not only were Silverstein's comments that Ms. Neuwirth was a Kahanist-swine libelous, there was more than sufficient evidence in the record for a finder of fact to find actual malice (opening the door to punitive damages!). While the court did let stand the dismissal of the second count (re the "death threat" libel), this was on a statutory technicality which protects providers of interactive computer services (i.e., Silverstein's blog) from tort liability for publishing the statements or content of third parties (Prof. Beinin's libelous comments).

Fine. Ms. Neuwirth will now get her second day in court and Richard Silverstein will no longer be able to hide behind the skirt of free speech the way Palestinian mujahideen hide behind children. Silverstein and Hamas most certainly deserve one another.

For the court's decision, go here. The thrust of the decision we reprint immediately below:

Civil Code section 45 defines libel as a “false and unprivileged publication by writing . . . or other fixed representation to the eye, which exposes any person to hatred, contempt, ridicule, or obloquy, or which causes him to be shunned or avoided, or which has a tendency to injure him in his occupation.” As the trial court concluded, plaintiff met her burden of establishing that Silverstein libeled her in calling her “Kahanist swine” in light of case law supporting Neuwirth’s contention that the reference was tantamount to calling her a terrorist; similarly, she met her burden of establishing Beinin had libeled her because she said he had falsely accused her of making a death threat, a crime.

We conclude that the trial court erred, however, in determining that the defendants’ evidence of privilege sufficed to establish as a matter of law that Neuwirth could not prevail on her claims—with the exception of Neuwirth’s second cause of action against Silverstein (for his repetition of Beinin’s accusation Neuwirth had made a death threat against him). Neuwirth cannot prevail against Silverstein in this regard for the reasons explained in Barrett v. Rosenthal, supra, 40 Cal.4th 33.

With the exception of this statutory immunity available to Silverstein on the second cause of action, however, not only Neuwirth’s evidence but also Silverstein’s and Beinin’s own evidence undermines both respondents’ claims that Neuwirth cannot establish malice—either to the extent Neuwirth is a limited public figure such that malice must be proven or as required for the conditional privilege of Civil Code section 47, subdivision (c), to apply. The record contains considerable evidence to support a finding of malice with respect to Silverstein’s statement that Neuwirth is “Kahanist swine.” Indeed, even if he cannot be held liable for his repetition of Beinin’s death threat accusation, it undermines his contention that the statement was merely nonactionable opinion rather than an assertion of fact. Similarly, Beinin does not dispute that in his 2004 deposition he specifically testified that he did not believe Neuwirth had threatened his life. Crediting Neuwirth’s evidence for purposes of these special motions to strike, it was error to conclude that she could not prevail on her claims as a matter of law.