French Court Tosses Ridiculous Criminal Complaint By Israeli Against An American Over Book Review By A German
One would think that people of intellect would recognize a losing battle and throw in the towel and move on. Sometimes criticisms are hard to swallow but taking a poor review and turning it into a multinational lawsuit because you feel "wronged" is just plain stupid.
Today's cautionary tale comes from an Israeli author/law professor by the name of Karin Calvo-Goller. She wrote a book that was reviewed by another law professor in Germany, Thomas Weigand that wasn't even scathing, it just said the book didn't live up to its potential.
But Calvo-Goller was not okay with that. She wrote the editor of the journal in which Weigand's review was published, an American man by the name of Joseph Weiler and claimed the review was libelous. It was not and Weiler took the time to explain why it wasn't.
Did this soothe Calvo-Goller's aggravation? Nope. She filed a lawsuit for criminal defamation in a Paris court. Why Paris? Who knows. France had nothing to do with the matter at all.
Not unsurprisingly, she lost the lawsuit against Weiler. In fact, she lost badly enough to have the court issue sanctions against her because of the ridiculousness of the lawsuit.
So, not only has Karin Galvo-Goller's ego taken a nice big hit for her lawsuit happy stupidity, she brought a whole bunch more attention to her "cause", has probably taken some professional hits as a result and really needs to recognize when a battle should be fought and when its best to just move on.
Note, the image up on top is of Barbara Streisand's house on the California coast. She tried to sue some pilot/photographers who were photographing the entire coastline.The Streisand Effect is an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely.
Rule #334 is Don't Shine a Spotlight on a Bad Review with a Ridiculous Lawsuit
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