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Lawsuits, PR and free speech
What to do when they say mean things about you by Paul Paquet APR Public relations is about winning the war of ideas in the
court of public opinion. However, lately, big corporations have decided to try the court of law, instead. Even the Reform party is threatening its political opponents with libel law suits.
But going to court will probably do you more damage than good. Last year, McDonald's won a long libel case against two British militants who had made false statements about the corporation while picketing. On the
surface, this looked pretty rosy for McDonald's. What the public saw, however, was a corporate Goliath beating on an idealistic David. And worse still, the lawsuit allowed those Davids to keep their criticisms of
McDonald's in the news for months. The Friends of the Lubicon (FoL) case is even stranger. Even though Daishowa had agreed to stop logging the natives' land, it became the target of a fierce boycott anyway. As
Daishowa lawyer Peter Jervis told This Magazine, "This is the only case I have ever heard of where a company is being boycotted for something it is not doing."
So Daishowa took FoL to court, claiming millions in damage. To the public, however, it looked an awful lot like Daishowa was stopping the boycott by keeping a nearly penniless organization silenced by injunctions and
locked in court battles it could not afford. Worse, Daishowa lost. It just didn't look good. And it doesn't look good for PR, either. Whatever the merits of the Daishowa case, too many corporations are fighting
community and environmental groups with "strategic lawsuits against public participation," or slapsuits. Slapsuits pit the raw financial power of a corporation against the limited resources of individuals
exercising free speech. The very possibility of a lawsuit could be enough to keep people from speaking out or from exercising their democratic rights. This violates a PR practitioners' obligation to maintain the
integrity of the channels of communication. Although there are times when malicious intent deserves a trip to the courts, both corporations and community activists would be better served by legislation that stopped
slapsuits earlier in the process, at less expense to the defendants. Eighteen American states have such legislation. We should have it, too.
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