Megan Thee Stallion's Defamation Lawsuit Against "Online Personality" "Milagro Gramz or Mobz World" Can Go Forward

Plus, does speech about a celebrity become "intentional infliction of emotional distress" when the celebrity is known to have been "trauma[tized]" by a violent crime?

From today's decision by Chief Judge Cecilia Altonaga (M.D. Fla.) in Pete v. Cooper:

The allegations are connected to the fallout from the 2022 conviction of Daystar Peterson, popularly known as Tory Lanez, a Canadian rapper and singer who was found guilty of assaulting Plaintiff with a firearm following a widely publicized trial. Plaintiff asserts that Defendant … uses [his social media accounts] to harass and defame Plaintiff by disseminating false narratives and conspiracy theories. These include claims that Plaintiff lied under oath, suffers from alcoholism, is "mentally retarded," and needs a guardian.

The court concludes that plaintiff had adequately alleged that the statements were (1) factual assertions (rather than just insults, hyperbole, or opinion), (2) false, and (3) said with knowledge or recklessness as to their being false.

The court also allows plaintiff's intentional infliction of emotional distress claim to go forward:

According to the Amended Complaint, Peterson shot at Plaintiff's feet while shouting, "Dance, bitch[,]" injuring her. At Peterson's trial—which Defendant allegedly attended—Plaintiff testified about the shooting and described the lasting trauma she endured. After that, Defendant allegedly aligned herself with Peterson, launching a campaign of harassment: publicly accusing Plaintiff of perjury, calling her a habitual drunk, suggesting she was legally incompetent, and directing followers to a deepfake pornographic video of her.

Taken in isolation, any one of these allegations might not suffice. But taken together, and against the backdrop of Plaintiff's alleged trauma—including suicidal thoughts following the shooting—the conduct plausibly rises to the level of extreme and outrageous. "[W]here the alleged conduct on the part of the [d]efendants may not be considered outrageous when the victim is of ordinary emotional and mental status, such conduct may become actionable … when the alleged victim suffers from known emotional and/or psychological trauma."

Second, even if Defendant's conduct was not independently extreme, dismissal would be premature given the undeveloped factual record. "[T]he lack of any record evidence at this point concerning" Plaintiff's "mental state" and Defendant's "level of knowledge about it" precludes such an early determination. Because Plaintiff's trauma and Defendant's alleged exploitation of it are central to the IIED analysis, the Court cannot conclude at this stage that the claim fails as a matter of law.

I'm concerned about the reasoning as to IIED, because it seems not to be limited to defamation cases (IIED is a separate tort from defamation); the logic seems to apply to opinions and to true statements, and not just false ones. And I don't think that the First Amendment would allow liability for expression of offensive opinion about public figures, based on the highly subjective "extreme and outrageous" standard (see Hustler Magazine v. Falwell (1988)). If the case eventually goes to trial, I hope that the court will make clear to the jurors that (as Hustler v. Falwell suggests) they can't find either defamation liability or IIED liability unless they find the speech to be false and defamatory.

Read the opinion for more details; I'll also try to blog separately about some other theories in the case.

Daniel L. Humphrey, Julian Schoen, Mari Henderson, and Olga M. Vieira (Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP) represent plaintiff.