Citizen Participation Act: Unleash the Hounds

Michael Miner is keeping abreast of a new law in Illinois that holds hope for bloggers and non-bloggers alike: Public Act 095-0506, also known as the Citizen Participation Act (CPA), passed last summer and yet to be tested in a court of law. Miner did an excellent report about the pending lawsuit in the April 3 issue of the Chicago Reader. Miner is a great writer, but I have one tiny bone to pick with him. It's nothing personal, I just wish to set the record straight. I reported on the case of Jaeger v. Okon, in which a developer sued a married couple for defamation - both on their blog and, allegedly, verbally. My Chicago Journal/Booster article, in the April 30 issue, broke the news that the developer and the bloggers had settled out of court. We were also the first to report that the new CPA was yet to be tested. Here's the bone picking: In the May 15 Reader, Miner had a few problems in an otherwise excellent article. "I wrote about Jaeger’s suit against the Okons in Hot Type on April 3," Miner wrote, "The Citizen Participation Act became law last August, and in March the Okons’s attorney, Daliah Saper, unleashed it on Jaeger and Donnelly." However, as I reported on April 30 (as noted by Miner), the Okon's and their attorney unleashed….nothing. Nothing at all, in fact, except a willingness to settle out of court and quietly go away. Granted, Ms. Saper would probably have "unleashed" the Citizen Partipation Act in court, had it gone to trial. With no trial, though, the CPA is yet to be tested, yet to be "unleashed." Miner continued, "Saper asked the court to dismiss Jaeger’s suit. Instead, the two sides promptly set­tled out of court." So, which is it? Did Saper "unleash" the CPA on developer Jaeger, or did Saper ask the court to dismiss the lawsuit? You don't "unleash" a law on anybody or in any court by asking for your case to be dismissed. It would be like a star football player "unleashing" his best plays against a team that lost the game because they didn't show up. In the next paragraph, Miner wrote, "According to an article in the Booster, the Okons wound up paying $20,000 and posting an apology on their blog, terms that don’t resemble victory and that make the Citizen Participation Act sound pretty toothless." "Toothless?" They settled out of court. Had the blogger's attorney, Ms. Saper, actually "unleashed" the CPA in a court of law, and had the CPA not swayed the court's decision, then it could correctly be said that the CPA sounds "pretty toothless." But a law that is yet to be tested cannot sound toothless - or toothy - until it's been tested. Such a case is called a "test" because, well, it tests the law to see just how good its teeth are. A couple of paragraphs later Miner wrote, "Because the two sides settled, Jaeger’s suit didn’t lead to what Saper had hoped it would: the first court test of the Illinois CPA." In my Booster article on April 30, I reported that Alex Memmen, an associate for developer Jaeger's legal counsel, "would have loved to litigate the case" [Jaeger v. Okon] "because it would have been the first case in Illinois" to test the CPA. The Illinois Legislature unanimously passed the Citizen Participation Act (Public Act 095-0506) last August. Approximately 20 other states have laws similar to Illinois' Public Act 095-0506, and more state legislatures are currently considering such laws. I rest my case.