ANALYSIS: TRUE. Elon Musk Needs to Sue Everybody.

Back in the dark times when I actively practiced law – I gave up my partnership on December 31st after 30 years of litigating on behalf of everybody from individuals to Fortune 500 companies – one of the things I spent a lot of my time on was counterintuitive. I spent a lot of time telling people they didn’t have a good lawsuit and shouldn’t bring one because they were going to lose or at least not gain enough to make the litigation nightmare worth living through. After doing that job, you can look at a case and have a pretty good idea of where it will end up. Of course, every case looks it’s very best the day the client brings it to you – it’s only after you file suit that you start seeing the problems, often brought to your attention by your opponent. In any case, talking people out of getting into lawsuits – whether bringing them or not settling them early if they are being sued – is a big part of any good trial lawyer’s practice. So, when I say that Elon Musk should sue a bunch of people over this Nazi salute lie, I don’t say it lightly.

Defamation lawsuits are among the hardest cases to win, and they should be because they involve speech, and the great weight of presumption in the law is in favor of free speech. To that end, the First Amendment fully protects an enormous amount of lying, deceit, and generally obnoxious comments. The burden is even higher when you’re bringing a case as a public figure – we presume that people are allowed to say pretty much whatever they want about public figures with some narrow exceptions.

Well, regarding the Elon Musk Nazi salute hoax, those exceptions apply. And it’s very important to discipline both the regime media and the individual liars to stop such hoaxes. Elon can do that by suing and hitting these scumbags where it hurts – the wallet.

That’s Kurt Schlichter so read the whole thing. And it’s a shame he’s retired from practice because Musk could do a lot worse than hire Kurt.