Welcome to the Louisville Restaurants Forum, a civil place for the intelligent discussion of the local restaurant scene and just about any other topic related to food and drink in and around Louisville.
User avatar
User

Robin Garr

{ RANK }

Forum host

Posts

22984

Joined

Tue Feb 27, 2007 2:38 pm

Location

Crescent Hill

NT Times: "Serving you tonight will be our lawyer"

by Robin Garr » Wed Mar 07, 2007 8:27 am

The NY Times has an excellent article today on the recent spate of legal actions against dining critics, including the Philadelphia lawsuit that was mentioned in a discussion here yesterday. It's a good, comprehensive and readable report that explains why dining critics have little to fear from such litigation. Barring very unusual circumstances, the restaurant just can't win. Here are the first few paragraphs as a fair-use snippet; you can click the link at the end to read the full story online.

Serving You Tonight Will Be Our Lawyer
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: March 7, 2007


THE review, published last month in The Philadelphia Inquirer, was three sentences long. It praised the crab cake at Chops restaurant in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., but said the meal there over all “was expensive and disappointing, from the soggy and sour chopped salad to a miserably tough and fatty strip steak.”

The resulting libel lawsuit was 16 pages long. It did not dispute that the steak was lousy. Rather, it said that Craig LaBan, a restaurant critic for The Inquirer, “ate a steak sandwich without bread, not a strip steak, and therefore had, and has, no personal knowledge of the quality of the Chops strip steak.”

By comparing “a $15 steak sandwich to an upscale dinner strip steak,” the suit said, Mr. LaBan and The Inquirer libeled the restaurant, hurting its reputation and business.

The suit joins a long line of court encounters between sharp reviews and the restaurateurial ego, and, if the earlier cases are a reliable guide, it is doomed.

Link to full story in The New York Times
(Requires free registration, but if you don't have it, you really should.)
[/url]
User avatar
User

Ron Johnson

{ RANK }

Foodie

Posts

1716

Joined

Thu Mar 01, 2007 11:48 am

by Ron Johnson » Wed Mar 07, 2007 8:47 am

The story is pretty accurate. I've always felt that a lawsuit would be without merit unless the reviewer stated something as fact that was not true, such as the restaurant was not accessible to the disabled when it did have an ADA approved ramp. Then there would be an issue of fact as to whether that was a malicious statement. Riegler would regularly say things in her review like the kitchen used microwave ovens. If, in fact, the kitchen did not use a microwave, I think she could've been in trouble. As long as critics stick to opinions, they are on solid ground.
User avatar
User

Ron Johnson

{ RANK }

Foodie

Posts

1716

Joined

Thu Mar 01, 2007 11:48 am

by Ron Johnson » Wed Mar 07, 2007 8:47 am

The story is pretty accurate. I've always felt that a lawsuit would be without merit unless the reviewer stated something as fact that was not true, such as the restaurant was not accessible to the disabled when it did have an ADA approved ramp. Then there would be an issue of fact as to whether that was a malicious statement. Riegler would regularly say things in her review like the kitchen used microwave ovens. If, in fact, the kitchen did not use a microwave, I think she could've been in trouble. As long as critics stick to opinions, they are on solid ground.
User avatar
User

Robin Garr

{ RANK }

Forum host

Posts

22984

Joined

Tue Feb 27, 2007 2:38 pm

Location

Crescent Hill

by Robin Garr » Wed Mar 07, 2007 8:59 am

Ron Johnson wrote:The story is pretty accurate. I've always felt that a lawsuit would be without merit unless the reviewer stated something as fact that was not true, such as the restaurant was not accessible to the disabled when it did have an ADA approved ramp. Then there would be an issue of fact as to whether that was a malicious statement. Riegler would regularly say things in her review like the kitchen used microwave ovens. If, in fact, the kitchen did not use a microwave, I think she could've been in trouble. As long as critics stick to opinions, they are on solid ground.


Speaking as a non-lawyer with a strong stake in understanding journalism law, I think that's a good summary, although I'd emphasize the "actual malice" element strongly: Absent a showing of malice, it's going to be tough to get a judgment on the basis of a mere misstatement of fact OR on the imaginative use of creative language.

Your excellent example in the other thread shows the kind of excess that might just sink a reviewer's case, though. ;)
User avatar
User

Ron Johnson

{ RANK }

Foodie

Posts

1716

Joined

Thu Mar 01, 2007 11:48 am

by Ron Johnson » Wed Mar 07, 2007 9:54 am

the issue of malice though would go to the jury as an issue of fact. I was trying to show what would get the case thrown out as a matter of law.
no avatar
User

Andrew Mellman

{ RANK }

Foodie

Posts

1694

Joined

Fri Mar 02, 2007 10:33 am

Location

Louisville

litigation

by Andrew Mellman » Wed Mar 07, 2007 6:13 pm

It's easy enough to avoid trouble! Just say things like, "it tasted as if it was finished in a microwave" and "I didn't see a handicapped ramp" rather than giving a definitive statement.

It's still in Britain that a reviewer could get in trouble fairly easy, not the US (although the Times story indicated that many British trials ended in verdicts for the reviewer also).
Andrew Mellman
User avatar
User

Robin Garr

{ RANK }

Forum host

Posts

22984

Joined

Tue Feb 27, 2007 2:38 pm

Location

Crescent Hill

Re: litigation

by Robin Garr » Wed Mar 07, 2007 6:17 pm

andrew mellman wrote:It's easy enough to avoid trouble! Just say things like, "it tasted as if it was finished in a microwave"


I've occasionally used snarky weasel-wording to reach the same destination by a slightly different road: "If it wasn't finished in a microwave, they did a remarkably good job of replicating the effect." :twisted:
User avatar
User

Kim H

{ RANK }

Foodie

Posts

941

Joined

Thu Mar 01, 2007 12:07 pm

Location

Louisville

Re: litigation

by Kim H » Wed Mar 07, 2007 6:25 pm

Robin Garr wrote:
"If it wasn't finished in a microwave, they did a remarkably good job of replicating the effect." :twisted:


Love It!!!
User avatar
User

Ron Johnson

{ RANK }

Foodie

Posts

1716

Joined

Thu Mar 01, 2007 11:48 am

Re: litigation

by Ron Johnson » Wed Mar 07, 2007 6:53 pm

andrew mellman wrote:It's easy enough to avoid trouble! Just say things like, "it tasted as if it was finished in a microwave" and "I didn't see a handicapped ramp" rather than giving a definitive statement.


That is exactly correct Andrew.

e.g. the last caesar salad I had at Vincenzo's featured romaine lettuce so brown that it could've easily come from the compost pile behind a Macaroni Grill. something like that . . .
User avatar
User

Robin Garr

{ RANK }

Forum host

Posts

22984

Joined

Tue Feb 27, 2007 2:38 pm

Location

Crescent Hill

Re: litigation

by Robin Garr » Wed Mar 07, 2007 7:56 pm

Ron Johnson wrote:e.g. the last caesar salad I had at Vincenzo's featured romaine lettuce so brown that it could've easily come from the compost pile behind a Macaroni Grill. something like that . . .


Interestingly, though, even if the critic said the lettuce "obviously came from the compost pile," there's abundant U.S. precedent holding that clearly exaggerated commentary is part and parcel of critical speech, and similar terms (some of them mentioned in the NYT article, I think) have failed to hold up as libel. The position of the courts seems to be, "critics use colorful, exaggerated language as part of their toolkit, and no reasonable person reads that kind of criticism as if it were precisely factual."

I understand that most lawyers would not recommend this course to a writer-client, but lawyers generally tend to be conservative about things like this. ;)
User avatar
User

David Clancy

{ RANK }

Foodie

Posts

730

Joined

Thu Mar 01, 2007 12:09 pm

Location

A couch in Andy's house.

by David Clancy » Wed Mar 07, 2007 10:20 pm

Fifteen bucks for a steak sandwich??? Damn, I have to rethink my menu...
David Clancy
Fabulous Old Louisville
(Is this your homework Larry?)
no avatar
User

John R.

{ RANK }

Foodie

Posts

426

Joined

Mon Mar 05, 2007 11:29 am

Location

Old Lousiville

by John R. » Mon Mar 12, 2007 12:53 pm

Yeah, it just perpetuates the predilection to be substandard. I can see a future where litigation has dictated the graffic design of everything. Where you have no idea what the product is because of the warnings. And food critics will have to have a 1000 word preamble cleaning theirs and their publishers hands from responsibility, followed by their 200 blurb review. The plantiffs in these cases only prove to me that the reviewer is correct. They would rather spend huge amounts of money on lawyers, instead of making their products ethereal.
User avatar
User

Ron Johnson

{ RANK }

Foodie

Posts

1716

Joined

Thu Mar 01, 2007 11:48 am

by Ron Johnson » Mon Mar 12, 2007 5:21 pm

John R. wrote:Yeah, it just perpetuates the predilection to be substandard. I can see a future where litigation has dictated the graffic design of everything. Where you have no idea what the product is because of the warnings. And food critics will have to have a 1000 word preamble cleaning theirs and their publishers hands from responsibility, followed by their 200 blurb review. The plantiffs in these cases only prove to me that the reviewer is correct. They would rather spend huge amounts of money on lawyers, instead of making their products ethereal.


I think this is a total over-reaction to a few cases. There is hardly widespread litigation against restaurant critics.

Litigation has been around for centuries. It has proved to be a good alternative to duels and frontier justice.

The sky is not falling.
no avatar
User

John R.

{ RANK }

Foodie

Posts

426

Joined

Mon Mar 05, 2007 11:29 am

Location

Old Lousiville

by John R. » Mon Mar 12, 2007 5:28 pm

:shock: You took that literal, Ron? The only real parts that should be taken serious were the first sentence and the last two sentences. The rest was hyperbole.
User avatar
User

Ron Johnson

{ RANK }

Foodie

Posts

1716

Joined

Thu Mar 01, 2007 11:48 am

by Ron Johnson » Mon Mar 12, 2007 6:10 pm

Thanks for the clarification John! :wink:
Next

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 37 guests

Powered by phpBB ® | phpBB3 Style by KomiDesign