No One Involved in Revenge Porn Lawsuit is Even Remotely Likeable
LatestThe jury selected to determine the fate of a lawsuit filed by the former Bengals cheerleader who famously slept with a teenage student against ooky revenge porn site The Dirty is having a hell of a time reaching a verdict. Apparently they’ve caught one of the worst possible cases of “Team Nobody.” Can you blame them? Well — kind of.
The apparently profoundly unlikeable story began when a user of upscale gentleman’s social mingling internet forum virtual playground for human dingleberries The Dirty posted a missive against then-Bengals cheerleader Sarah Jones. The post claimed that Jones was a woman of ill repute filthy, smelly hooker hole who had all sorts of social diseases and slept with all of the Cincinnati Bengals, which would have been impossible, because everyone knows the Bengals suck at scoring. (HEYOH!) Jones claimed the posting damaged her reputation and is seeking $11 million in damages from the owner of The Dirty.
But suing a revenge porn site isn’t the only newsworthy event in Jones’ life. Last year, she made headlines when she was convicted of sleeping with an underage student who is now her boyfriend. At one point, Jones texted her student that it was “love at first sight” when he walked into her freshman English classroom. Which— ew.
The posts on The Dirty predated Jones’ dalliances with her student, but that hasn’t stopped lawyers from The Dirty and its owner, Nik Richie, from claiming that Jones shouldn’t get money from the lawsuit because she’s an icky prostitution whore who can’t be trusted to tell the truth because vagina. Richie’s lawyer seems especially hellbent on this “Dicks in, lies out” theory of whether women can be trusted.
In his closing argument, Alex Ward — one of Richie’s attorneys — argued that the first post about Jones having sex with all the Bengals players was a clear exaggeration that no reasonable person would believe, and therefore, didn’t amount to defamation. He said the second post, which said that Jones’ ex-husband cheated on her with 50 women, had gonorrhea and chlamydia, and likely gave it to Jones, was merely an opinion that also did not amount to defamation.
Even if jurors didn’t agree with those arguments, Ward told them that they should not find in Jones’ favor because she’s a convicted felon, an admitted liar and had sex with a student.
He added that the posts were generally true because Jones has shown that she is “sexually immoral.”
Meow!
Further, Richie says that he can’t be held responsible for posts members make on a public forum — even though his public forum exists almost expressly to humiliate and shame women. It’s not his fault that people used his website for the purpose for which it was designed!
Jones’ lawyers want the jury to ignore her studentfucking and focus instead on the greater good that would be accomplished if only they’d make The Dirty pay Sarah Jones $11 million. That amount of money could cripple the site, and a judgment against it would almost certainly doom its future. Never mind the fact that it would also buy a 27-year-old woman with a freshly 18-year-old boyfriend tons of stuff. Like happiness.
The jury, unsurprisingly, is having trouble picking sides, and were ordered to try again after telling a judge yesterday that they simply couldn’t agree on a verdict.
Richie has vowed to appeal a decision against him. Thank god. It’s about time someone bravely fought for the right to rag on women’s looks and sexuality.