The 10-count civil lawsuit accuses James W. Conradt of libel, copyright violations and trademark infringements.
Conradt has expressed remorse over the hoax and announced he was taking down his Husker Web site.

“I am sorry for any trouble this has caused,” Conradt said in a statement on www.darthhusker.com. “Please consider this to be an official retraction and correction.”
OPUBCO is a leading provider of news and information in Oklahoma through its newspaper, The Oklahoman, and Web site, NewsOK.Com.

The publishing company and sportswriter Jake Trotter sued Conradt in federal court in Oklahoma City.
Conradt published a “defamatory” article on the Internet July 9 that falsely stated University of Oklahoma quarterbacks Sam Bradford and Landry Jones had been arrested for intent to distribute cocaine, the lawsuit alleges.

Conradt allegedly put a link to the article on his Web site and an online sports message board.
The lawsuit claims Conradt used Oklahoman staff writer Jake Trotter’s byline and various OPUBCO trademarks to give the bogus Internet article the appearance of legitimacy.

Conradt placed Trotter in a false light and damaged his reputation and occupation by publishing the story, the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified financial damages. The lawsuit also asks a federal judge to order Conradt not to misuse OPUBCO trademarks in the future, to require Conradt to prepare a written report stating how he will comply with that order, and to order Conradt to publish “corrective advertising” to compensate for the harm he allegedly caused.

Conradt, 36, is a Nebraska fan who works as a computing services manager in the information technology department at the University of Texas. He could not be reached for comment Monday evening or today.

Last week, Conradt admitted to Oklahoman columnist Berry Tramel in a telephone interview that Conradt was responsible for the hoax. He said he wasn’t thinking.

“I want to express my deepest apologies to the families,” Conradt said last Wednesday. “That’s the thing I’m regretful about. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

The lawsuit claims Conradt was “well aware of the dangers that can be caused by posting harmful attacks anonymously on the Internet.”

It points to a Jan. 10, 2005 article in the Lincoln Journal Star, a Nebraska newspaper, in which Conradt was quoted discussing how easily people can post untrue rumors on Internet message boards.
“I think anonymity brings out the worst in people,” Conradt was quoted as saying. “There are no consequences for saying what you say. I think that’s probably where the whole concept of flaming comes from. They probably didn’t have that in the old days around the coffee pot at work, the profanity-laced, ultra-negative outbursts.”

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I think this is a little much. It was a message board joke. I'd be after the idiot "journalists" who ran with the story before checking it out more closely.

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I think his biggest problem is going to be using the copyrighted logos from newsok and the reporters name in the story

Midtowner or someone else with legal knowledge, couldn't the guy just claim it was a "parody" which is protected by law?

I'm actually taking an advanced torts class right now. Defamation is one of the items on my final the day after tommorow.

You can't just say "parody" and be protected under the First Amendment.

This is simple defamation (libel) which is the publication of something to third persons which would tend to lower the plaintiff's standing in the community.

To further break it down, there are two types of defamation -- per se and per quod. Before I get into what per se is, I'll preface it by saying that there are four types of defamation which are easier to prosecute than others. They are: 1) Accusation of crime; 2) Accusation that one has a loathesome disease; 3) Imputation of character problems incompatible with one's trade or profession; and 4) Serious sexual misconduct. Per quod covers anything else which is no per se, but still causes some sort of pecuniary harm, i.e., we don't compensate plaintiffs for simple affronts to their honor except in certain cases.

Here, we have one, arguably two of those per se types. First, we have the easy one -- accusation of a crime. Distribution of drugs is a crime, no further explanation is really needed. We also have the suggestion of a character trait which is incompatible with the two plaintiffs' trades/professions. They're QB's for one of the most storied programs in football. They are required to live up to a very high moral standard. Being drug dealers would certainly be incompatible with that standard.

So now that we've established what sort of libel this might be (and it's libel because it was written), we'll hit the elements of the tort --

1) Was there publication? Yep. People besides the plaintiff and defendant saw it, so you betcha.
2) Would the statement lower the standing of the plaintiffs in the community? Simple answer -- yes.

Let's just get this out of the way -- truth is a defense to defamation... not a 100% one, but it works. Here, the defendant clearly knew what he published was false, so let's just forget about truth as a defense.

#2 is where we might want to spend a little time. To really be able to lower the standing of the plaintiff in the community, the statement should be (doesn't always have to be, but it is a defense) capable of being believed.

Here, I don't think there's a problem with that. A couple of Texas radio stations clearly believed it. A lot of Sooner fans thought the team's season was in the crapper for a few hours that day. Keith Nichol might have even regretted a certain recent decision that day. All of things count towards making me think that this isn't really parody.

Now, public figures are entitled to a little less protection in these sorts of situations. O'Sullivan v. New York Times case illustrates that. It held that to prevail on a defamation claim, if the plaintiff was a public figure (and OU QBs are public figures), the plaintiff would have to show that the defendant made their comments with "actual malice."

Now, "actual malice" isn't what you probably think it is. Actual malice is sort of a "mens rea" (guilty mind) element. It means that the publication must have been made with either knowledge of the falsity or reckless disregard for the truth. That is to say -- simple negligence won't do. Here, the defendant, since he made the charges up, clearly had actual knowledge of the falsity of what he was charging, so yes, the actual malice element required for public figures to succeed on defamation claims is a winner.

You said parody, so you remember the Hustler Magazine v. Falwell case. That is where Hustler Magazine did a spoof ad for an alcoholic beverage where Rev. Falwell described his first sexual experience. It was apparently a drunken encounter between Fallwell and his mother in an outhouse. The court here held that the alleged facts were parody/satire. They were parody because they simply weren't believable. No one would actually believe that this was a real liquor ad featuring Fallwell talking about his first sexual experience with his mother in an outhouse (at least no reasonable person would think that).

In our case, I don't think that's a problem. As I mentioned it above, there were news stations reporting it as fact... so I don't think the satire/parody defense works here.

As for the damages aspect of the crime, I don't know what Oklahoma prescribes in the way of statutory damages for libel. Not a clue.. I do think defendant might find himself owing that amount though, together with whatever plaintiffs can come up with and get a jury to go for.

-- and that's without even getting into the copyright stuff.

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That was a very good explanation, Midtowner.

I have to agree with MadMonk that nobody would have ever even known about this had real journalists done their job and checked the story before running with something from a message board. Especially in the days where Photoshop can allow anybody to be The New York Times in a screenshot.

That'll happen when you're 2 days away from a law school final covering that subject

It's always nice when I can count screwing around on a message board when I should be studying as "study time."

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hmmm... your analysis seems spot on, midtowner... however, the way the above article reads leads me to believe that this libel suit is filed by those representing opubco and jake trotter, the impersonated sportswriter, and not by anyone representing the two players. therefore aren't we really discussing the tarnished reputation of the sportswriter and newspaper? does that really change anything?

-M

Yes.

I see two places the sports writer might have a cause of action, but if the sportswriter is reading this, I must tell him that I'm only answering questions on a message board, and if he agrees with Mr. Trammel, I'm posting on a message board, so I'm a loser who just makes stuff up and doesn't know what I'm talking about, so I can't be thought of as giving legal advice to anyone because quite clearly, I'm an idiot.

Now that I've placed that nice little disclaimer (which applies to my previous remarks because for whatever reason the BBS won't let me edit to add a disclaimer to it as well), the sportswriter may have the following causes of action (although I don't know if Oklahoma recognizes either ):

False Light -- False light occurs when the defendant communicates information to a fair number of 3rd parties which casts the plaintiff in a false light in the public eye. If the matter is newsworthy (and it is), the above, New York Times v. O'Sullivan (did I reverse the name above? I wish that edit thing worked) "actual malice" as in knowledge or reckless disregard for the falsity of the information being published standard applies as well. The defendant must also have caused the publication and the sort of falsity implied must be highly offensive to the reasonable person.

Here, the sportswriter (I'll call him the plaintiff) had his name written on a fake news article which contained false information, and by all accounts was terribly written. The implication here was that this sportswriter made up a very damaging story about two of the most famous athletes in the state, was a professional failure, and a bad writer to boot -- clearly all false and all, I think would be highly offensive to the reasonable person.

Unlike defamation torts, false light requires dissemination to a larger number of people -- here, that definitely happened. Lots of people saw this story before it was found to be false. The writer's name appeared on it, he was cast in a false light, therefore damaged.

I know of a case (name escapes me) where this tort was found to lie for a famous poet whose name was signed to an inferior work (implying that he wrote a piece of crap poem). This isn't a whole lot different.

As to the newspaper, they probably have copyright claims, maybe false light as well, falling under a similar fact pattern.

-- I'll say it again, this is Restatement stuff, I don't even know if courts recognize this tort in Oklahoma.

-- again, I don't even know if Oklahoma law recognizes this tort.

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Thanks for all of the explanations, Midtowner. Since this thing broke, I've always felt that the paper/reporter almost had a stronger case than the players. It will be interesting to see what the court says.

I doubt it goes to court. These parties will settle, IMHO.

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You know how many times "journalists" have had egg on their face for regurgitating a story over and over, only to find out that it originated at TheOnion.com? TONS. And I laugh and laugh and lau....Yeah. I find it AWESOME when that happens.

It would have been easy to check the story and the news agencies didnt.

My hubby and I knew it was fake when we read it because the address listed was an OKC address not a Norman address, and Norman police to not have a captain named Jeff Becker, but Oklahoma City Police do.....(we have a bit of insight here) a simple phone call and a google map check would have raised some questions about authenticity......

It just continually irritates me that news reporting now places a priority of getting the story out FIRST instead of getting the stroy out truthfully.

I'm not a lawyer or anything, but maybe he should have settled the case before admitting that he did it?

Whew, if accuracy is your measure of whether or not a story is coming from a legitimate news source you're in for a rude awakening!

Agreed, not that they couldn't have pinned him down as the author, but it would not have wrapped their case up into a pretty little bow. Deny, deny, deny.

This is either for show or ego. Either way, it never goes to trial.

However, with a little app like this, we could all geet into alot of trouble... Bookmarklets: Edit Any Web Page with a Bookmarklet

It's not really advisable to buttress a defense on lies in a case where punitive damages might become a reality.

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Right..... Because any decent lawyer would have told him to admit to everything and hope for forgiveness?

Probably the reason the only suing party is the sports writer is most likely because everyone else realized the prankster had no money. He can have millions awarded in damages, but you can't get blood from a turnip.

The pranksters best defense should have been to lawyer up and shut. Have his lawyer make it very clear his client has no money and find a way to mak it all go away.

Personally, I hope the pranksters lawyer is good enough at PR to make the plantiff look like a complete jerk.

There's a huge difference between denying something and pleading the 5th. One is a lie in this case, and the other is not.

Libel is a crime in Oklahoma punishable by jail time and fines, so the 5th would work. It'd be pretty stupid to do that though since guilt here has pretty much been conclusively established.

Whether or not this fella has money is not an issue. To plead under diversity, the sportswriter is having to say he's entitled to at least $75K in damages. I think the equitable relief is also good here, i.e., the corrective advertising and the promise not to misappropriate the Oklahoman's copyrighted images.

Conradt probably has money -- he works I.T. at the University of Texas, right? He probably makes a decent salary, has a house, etc. There's probably all kinds of stuff the plaintiff could go after. The lawyer can't "make clear his client has no money" if that's not the case.

As far as the defense goes, leave it to the professionals. In this thread you have suggested that the defendant lie and then hide assets. At that rate, your Bar card would last you about 5 minutes.

I have no qualms with what's happening right now. The P.R. they're receiving is sound. To come off as anything more than contrite has a huge potential to backfire. To be contrite, IMHO only has an upside.

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Do not put yourself or the profession you seek on such a pedestal. Virtually every person convicted of a crime had a lawyer yelling to the press that their client was innocent. Lawyers make a good living advising people how to avoid being convicted of a crime. Laws are mostly interpretive and a good lawyer can twist his client's interpretation of the law to best fit their needs.

When I need a lawyer, the last thing I want is one that isn't ready to get dirty in a real fight.

That doesn't have to involve lying. It usually involves the client knowing when to shut up.

In this case though, we know the guy did it, so I don't see how anything you say is a good idea or responsive to anything in this thread thus far. There's nothing to "interpret" about this case. Here, the law is 100% clear. In fact, I'll bet if I go look, I can find jury instructions on OIJA which I wouldn't even have to edit.

Did you even mean to say that?

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No, lawyers tell their clients to shut up. That is the proper advice when the client is guilty and that is the proper advice when the client is innocent.

I wasn't saying that the guy should have denied what he did or lied, I was saying that it was dumb for him to say anything at all.

A guilty person has some rights and doesn't need to submit himself to the mercy of his accusers.

An innocent person can find himself guilty because he made a statement that was used against him, it happens all the time.

Thanks MidTowner for that post.

Well it doesn't sound good for Mr. IT guy. Possibly 75k in damages seems really excessive to me though. I would hope they would settle out of court too.

I haven't seen the pleadings, but since they said "Federal Court," 75K is just a statutory minimum which must be pled to get into federal court. It doesn't mean anyone actually expects 75K.

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So, are you saying that every time you turn on the TV and some lawyer is proclaiming their client innocent - yet later they are found guilty - they are not lying?

I agree the prankster should have just hung-up on the media or anyone else and got himself a lawyer. But don't act like page one out of a lawyer's play isn't to deny guilt at every turn.

Until they are found guilty, they ARE innocent.

Would you prefer it be some other way? Maybe pull out a stake and burn the person before we have a trial? Make DHS in charge of criminal trails?