
James Woods has spent the last six months engaged in two very meaningful pursuits: tweeting, mainly about politicsâObama is popular among people on welfare, Bernie Sanders is a âcommie scarecrowââand suing the anonymous Twitter user who called him a âcocaine addictâ and a âridiculous scum clown-boy.â On Wednesday, Woods got one step closer to discovering the identity of whoeverâs calling him a ridiculous scum clown-boy.
Woods filed a defamation suit in July in Los Angeles County Superior Court against a person who tweeted under the name Abe List, and who used that account to accuse Woods of snorting cocaine, as well as being a prick, a joke, and a ridiculous scum clown-boy, none of which are nice things to say to anyone, but the last of which is pretty funny. (âCocaine addictâ is the only one that is actually defamatory and not just an insult.)
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Twitter has stoutly refused to give up the name of the person who thinks Woods is a cocaine-using ridiculous scum clown-boyâthat person has been sending a lawyer to court solo instead of appearing in person. But the case swung in Woodsâ direction yesterday, when a judge denied the defenseâs motion to strike.
The motion was based on Californiaâs anti-SLAPP laws, which are designed to protect peopleâs First Amendment rights. But Judge Mel Red Recana sided, surprisingly, with Woods, writing in a decision that many people would interpret the âcocaine addictâ thing to be factual, an argument that Woodsâ lawyers also made in their motion opposing the order to strike. (They even hired a linguistics professor to opine that most Twitter users would interpret âcocaine addictâ as a statement of fact.)
The Hollywood Reporter got hold of the judgeâs order, which actually says that any reader of the tweet âcould and indeed must view it as a statement of fact:
Applying the totality of circumstances test, and examining the plain language of the Tweet, it is clear that any reader of the AL False Statement could and indeed must view it as a statement of fact. As described by Professor Finegan, ALâs use of a prenomial characterization (i.e. âcocaine addictâ) followed by a proper noun (i.e., âJames Woodsâ) is a well-established linguistic structure widely used to characterize people with shorthand factual information. Prof. Fineganâs opinion that âmany if not all readers of the âcocaine addictâ Tweet will understand and interpret Abe List to be making a factual claim about James Woods â namely that he is a cocaine addictâ is on an issue of fact. His opinion is sufficiently beyond common experience and assists the trier of fact.
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The lawsuit will proceed to discovery, where Woods and his attorneys will continue trying to determine who thinks heâs a ridiculous scum clown-boy.
Woods is very excited about his victory:
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He then got right back to tweeting outraged things about Hillary Clinton.
Abe List, meanwhile, has protected his Twitter account, his location now reads, âActing on advice of counsel.â
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Contact the author at anna.merlan@jezebel.com.
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Image via AP.