The Washington D.C. federal appeals court rejected the claim of the author of a book alleging Obama was not born in the U.S. that an Esquire magazine article defamed him. The court ruled that the article was protected political satire. The court further commented that Esquire readers were informed about the issue and unlikely to take the article at face value and that the article itself was written in a way that revealed it was not a typical news story. (Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, November 26, 2013, by Cindy Gierhart)
A three-judge panel threw out the $160 million defamation suit even though the author contended that booksellers pulled the book and that customers asked for refunds based on assertions in the article. The court said the test for satire protection hung on whether a reasonable reader could be misled after having a chance to consider the article not whether some actual readers were misled. (Law360, November 26, 2013, by Michael Lipkin)
An column in the Daily Kos, November 26, 2013, by AnitaMaria pointed out that the author of the book admitted the article was “very poorly executed parody.” The author’s lawyer contended that he author meant that the article wasn’t parody at all. The judges did not agree with the lawyer.