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| Hearsay: |
In Soviet Russia, review trashes you!
On April 23, 2009, a federal district court in the southern Russian province of Dagestan issued an unprecedented ruling, ordering a journalist of a local newspaper to pay compensation in an amount equal to US$1,000 to a writer who did not like a review of his book published in the newspaper. The plaintiff, an author whose work of fiction was reviewed in the publication’s book review section, sued the reviewer, claiming that the author and his family had experienced severe mental suffering and that his professional reputation was damaged as a result of the review. The writer stated that after reading the book review, he experienced chest pains, headache, and elevated blood pressure. He demanded to be compensated in the amount of US$150,000. Both parties were dissatisfied with the court ruling and expressed their intention to appeal.
I… I… I’m speechless.
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May 15th, 2009 at 10:33 am
You left out the best part!
“Some have even suggested that if a book reviewer can be sued, a reader who did not like a book can sue the author for making a bad quality product.”
LOL. I have no doubt the decision will be overturned, but in the meantime it’s kinda fun to think about suing authors over bad books.
May 15th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
So to prevent lawsuits, books should have blurbs like: guaranteed 150,250 words; money back if one word less; many adjectives and adverbs included; also dialogue and regular punctuation marks.
May 18th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Dagestan is more of a colony than a ‘province,’ a rough piece of territory near Chechnya which is only about 5% Russian (and that number presumably largely military). I don’t doubt the author experienced the symptoms described, since anything that makes you unpopular in Dagestan is as likely to make you dead.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Just don’t hurt my feelings with your book review or I’ll call the cops.
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“U.S. House of Representatives bill proposed by Rep. Linda T. Sanchez and 14 others that could make it a federal felony to use your blog, social media like MySpace and Facebook, or any other web media “To Cause Substantial Emotional Distress Through “Severe, Repeated, and Hostile” Speech.”