Posts by ScottY
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a moneyless system would be better.
Please indulge my curiosity and explain how that would work.
After that, the rest of the papers were covered in my spew, which kinda made the Paul Holmes column unreadable.
Rich, it wasn't your spewing that made the Holmes article unreadable.
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Our legal system is half a step advanced from "trial by combat", especially in the civil area, but not much less in the criminal area.
Mark. I'd be the first person to agree that the system isn't always perfect. But, by and large, it works reasonably well for most people who use it. Most people who curse the legal system are actually complaining about the court system and its cost and complexity, and there is some justice to those complaints.
But, speaking as a commercial lawyer, most of my clients never go anywhere near the courts, and generally most of them are happy with their outcomes. Indeed, most people who use the legal system don't go anywhere near a courtroom.
Bashing the legal system and its inequities is like blaming Corrections every time someone on parole kills or hurts someone. The system's an easy target, but nobody can actually think of a better way to do things. But we'll just blame the entire system anyway.
Assuming that you mean the "Sensible Sentencing Trust", I would disagree with you to an extreme.
Islander, yes that's who I was referring to.
I thought for a moment Mrs Skin was referring to a two-bit outfit churning out dross and highly subjective opinion masquerading as fact. But then I realised she wasn't referring to the Sunday Star Times.
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I should have refreshed before my last post...
Obsessive behaviour from the owner of a site is quite different from a drive-by comment on a forum that can be removed / altered if anyone can be bothered complaining?
The safer approach is to remove any potentially inflammatory comments before the complaint arrives. Often the first thing an organisation knows about a complaint is when it receives a "cease and desist" letter from the complainant's lawyers. And a common demand made in any "cease and desist" letter is "...and you must also pay our legal costs".
So it's better not to get the complaint in the first place. If a comment is potentially defamatory it shouldn't stay up unless the site owner's fairly confident they have a good defence (e.g. truth, honest opinion etc).
I don't think any of us should post anything that could mean Russell has to take a hit - unless we're all prepared to have a whip-around to help cover his legal costs?
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I just can’t see how a third party, posting something on a forum, could cause any long term damage.
It's not as simple as that. If someone posts an inflammatory comment on a blog site and the site's owner doesn't take it down, or delays in doing anything about the post, the site's owner may become liable if someone perceives they have suffered some blow to their good name.
Even if there are no genuine grounds for legal action, the site's owner could still end up spending thousand in legal costs defending himself/herself.
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Fair enough -- and I'm not trying to bait you into getting yourself disbarred.
Thank, Craig - and I'm sorry if that's what you thought, as I wasn't suggesting you were trying to do that.
I just have to watch what I say about some people, regardless of that fact that in many instances I may agree totally with what others have said. I'm probably being overly cautious anyway...
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Have there been any forums shut down by lawyers in NZ?
They've tried, i.e Stiassny v Siemer. But if the site is not based in NZ and the defendant is prepared to go to jail it can be hard for a complainant to do anything.
I'm not sure if anyone else has tried, but I'm sure many a "cease and desist" letter has been sent.
Would removing the offending post/s be the obvious compromise?
The removal of an offending post will usually satisfy a complainant, although some may also want a public apology. Most complainants don't want to spend thousands on legal proceedings, unfortunately...
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Craig, I may or may not agree with you, but as Rickards is now a member of my profession I'm not allowed to slag him off.
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Cloudwalker, regardless of what you think of Clint Rickards as a person, he was never convicted of a sexual offence.
You may hold whatever views you like, but the last part of your post (which I won't repeat) doesn't belong in a public forum.
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I can't help but think they had Chatwin on the line to comment on their silly story about whether Westies are happy, and thought they'd get a Veitch quote too. It's that lame.
Russell, they were two diferent papers. Here's the Westie story.
I know it's off-thread, but allow me to rant about the Westie article. It's a piece of lazy journalism. Things like this that piss me off:
Robyn Malcolm can judge the mood in Waitakere better than most: the hard-working, hard-partying character she plays on TV's Outrageous Fortune is the archetypal Westie, yet the actor herself lives in Devonport on Auckland's North Shore. Malcolm says every place has its happy and its unhappy bits: "It depends on who moves in."
So she doesn't live in West Auckland, but because she plays a character in a TV show who does, she knows the mood better than most? They could have just interviewed some more locals.
Rant over. As you were.
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It's hard to know whether the latest report is genuine or more PR spin.
However, let's assume for a moment that the suicide attempt story is genuine. We've all enjoyed putting the boot in (sorry about the pun), myself included, but if he has attempted self-harm he needs serious help.
I don't for a moment excuse the appalling thing he has done, but maybe it's time we all calm down and let the man get the help he needs.
It may be just a PR stunt, but what if it isn't? I don't want to help drive anyone (however unpleasant they may be) to an early grave.