Hey, remember that little weenus Nick Sandmann who got in that nasty confrontation with Native American Elder Nathan Phillips during the Indigenous People’s March in 2019? Naturally the Right made the then-17-year-old a hero, even giving him a speaking spot at the RNC in 2020. Always be trolling!
If our teenagers showed that kind of disrespect to an adult, we’d ground them for life. But no! Sandmann’s parents filed a real life defamation suit against half the media outlets in America for defaming their poor, innocent, and most importantly well-mannered baby.
“ABC’s reporting conveyed the false and defamatory gist that Nicholas was the face of an unruly hate mob of hundreds of white, racist high school students who physically assaulted and harassed Native Americans who were engaged in peaceful demonstrations, song and prayer at the National Mall,” read a complaint seeking $20 million from the network. Sandmann was originally represented by Kraken lawyer Lin Wood, but the pair parted ways after a Parler post in which the attorney appeared to advocate for executing the Vice President by firing squad in the wake of the Capitol Riot.
Ughh, don’t you just hate it when your attorney has no inside voice?
The Washington Post, CNN, and NBC settled with the teenager for undisclosed amounts, but Sandmann still had hundreds of millions of dollars of pending claims against ABC, CBS, Rolling Stone, Gannett, and the New York Times.
“Had” being the operative word since Senior US District Judge William Bertelsman just bounced the kid’s dumb LOLsuits out of court for oh, shut up, that is not defamation, you little pisspants snowflake.
Okay, that’s not the actual name of the legal doctrine, but it’s not that far off. Essentially, the alleged defamatory language here amounted to articles saying that the little weenie “blocked” Phillips’s path. And the sum total of the evidence was a bunch of videos of the stand-off, a handful of conflicting witness statements, and testimony from Sandmann and Phillips.
“Although lengthy, Sandmann’s deposition contains relatively little testimony pertinent to the issues at hand,” wrote Judge Bertelsman dryly. In short, the kid thought he was being “mature” by “standing his ground,” but he could see as how Phillips might have perceived this as “blocking.” For his part, Phillips said that he did, in fact, feel like his path was “blocked.”
Sandmann’s lawyers argued that the papers had made false statements of fact in articles claiming that their client “blocked” Phillips. But the court ruled that “‘blocking’ is an imprecise term capable of different meanings,” and “a reasonable reader would understand that Phillips was simply conveying his view of the situation.”
“Phillips’s statements that Sandmann ‘blocked’ him and ‘wouldn’t allow [him] to retreat’ are objectively unverifiable and thus unactionable opinions,” Judge Bertelsman wrote, cockblocking dismissing the case.
Naturally, this smirking little shit has promised to appeal, if only to extend his five minutes of fame. Your Wonkette wishes him the very best of luck in his future endeavors and sincerely hopes that we never have to spend one more second thinking about him again.
Boy, BYE.
[Sandmann v. ABC News, Docket via Court Listener]
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