In Court, LA Times Lawyer Floats “Superfluous Arguments” to Stall Justice

August 24, 2016

The LA Times was expecting good news yesterday: that, because I’d be unable to raise $75,000 cash bond to continue my lawsuit for defamation and wrongful termination, and defend myself from their perverted “anti-SLAPP” motion.

Sadly for them, they were informed that the bond had been filed and had been received by the court. Thanks to more than 750 contributions through my GoFundMe crowdfunding page, my case will move forward.

In the Times’ ongoing attempt to prevent a jury from hearing about their sleazy collusion with the Los Angeles Police Department and repeated lies to Times readers, attorney Kelli Sager, however, complained that the bond “had omitted several defendants who are part of the litigation” and “said she was concerned the omissions would prevent the defendants from enforcing the bond.” The space on the form doesn’t have enough room for all the defendants in the case.

The judge ordered Sager and my attorneys to confer in order to fix the bureaucratic detail.

My attorney Carney Shegerian Carney Shegerian called the Times’ anti-SLAPP motion “borderline frivolous.”

“The thinking behind it, unfortunately, is really you just scare plaintiffs because there’s a huge fee-shifting component to it that can be applied and so plaintiffs can get very scared,” Shegerian told Courthouse News Service. “It really just chills civil rights litigation and it chills defamation litigation like this one.”

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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Trump vs. Clinton Will Come Down to the Debates

August 22, 2016

Conventional wisdom says Donald Trump is going to lose, and lose big.

You see it everywhere in corporate media. Republican Party insiders are bereft and in denial, simultaneously refusing to accept the reality that their party is facing the possibility of catastrophic defeats in races all over the country this fall; indeed, some pundits say Trump marks the beginning of the end of the GOP. The New York Times is running a 24-7 odds placement that puts Hillary Clinton’s chances of victory at 86% against his 14%.

Indeed, if the election were held today, Hillary Clinton would beat Trump by a sizable margin. But the election is in two months. Two months is a long time. Old scandals percolate; new ones emerge. Another terrorist attack could prompt voters to turn to the right.

By far the biggest potential game changer, however, is the presidential debates. Conventional wisdom says Hillary Clinton will use her superior command of the facts and her ability to namedrop world leaders to run circles around Trump. But conventional wisdom is often wrong – just ask unstoppable 2016 Republican presidential nominee Jeb Bush.

I think Donald will trounce Hillary in the debates.

In fact, I can’t imagine any scenario in which she doesn’t get destroyed.

We like to think that the presidential debates are about issues and facts. They aren’t. The winner is the candidate who unleashes the zingiest one-liners and putdowns.

“There you go again.”

“Where’s the beef?”

“I knew Jack Kennedy; Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

You’ve watched Donald Trump. You’ve watched Hillary Clinton. Who do you think is better positioned to control the format?

I have no idea whether Hillary Clinton can be quick on her feet or sharp with a nasty one-liner. It doesn’t matter. Her brand is experience and competence. She can’t get down into the gutter with Trump without undermining her message that she’s the adult. She has to look serious and come across as – there’s no other word for it – boring. Remember what happened to Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush when they tried to out-Trump Trump: they wrecked whatever chances they still had to stop him during the primaries.

A more courtly candidate (Bernie Sanders) might have gone easy on Clinton for fear of being viewed as sexist. That concern won’t cross Trump’s mind. He’ll go after her with the ferocity of Black Friday shoppers chasing down a discount Xbox.

Does Trump have vulnerabilities? Obviously. Hillary’s aces in the hole are the temperament argument and his refusal to release his taxes. The secrecy surrounding his tax returns raises suspicions that risk unraveling the fundamental rationale of his candidacy: I’m rich and successful, and I can use the talents I used to get that way to benefit the country. But her vulnerabilities are more serious.

The problem for Hillary is that she has gotten a relatively free ride from journalists and pundits, most of whom will vote for her. Her hypocrisies and inconsistencies comparatively unexamined, she emerges from her primary campaign untested and untempered. The debates offer Trump a juicy opportunity to expose those weaknesses on what promises to be a national stage with record audiences.

If she asks him about his tax returns, he can deflect by demanding the transcripts of her speeches to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms, which she repeatedly refused to release while fending off Bernie. When she goes after him on ethics, he’ll pound away on the 30,000 deleted emails. Oh, and now there’s the latest Clinton Foundation sleaze too.

If Trump wants to go nuclear, he can slam her with the biggest unreported story of the year: the allegation that her husband President Bill was a frequent flyer on a convicted pedophile’s sexual tourism escapades overseas.

I understand why Secretary Clinton was reluctant to agree to any debates. Past performance suggests that she isn’t a strong debater to begin with. Going against a master reality TV and pro wrestling ringmaster like Donald Trump has got to feel like walking into the Coliseum with nothing but faith in God to protect you from the lion’s maw. Trump knows all the tricks: how to deploy comical facial expressions as well as Jim Carrey, how to dominate others using body language, a laser-like ability to identify an opponent’s weaknesses and reduce them to rubble via ridicule (“Little Marco”). In an American presidential debate, 15-point white papers don’t count for jack. The best entertainer always wins.

During a 2000 debate Al Gore walked right up to George W. Bush, looming over him in what many watchers interpreted as an attempt to intimidate the Texas governor. Bush merely looked up at Gore and nodded, a droll look on his face.           Bush was an idiot. Gore was a genius by comparison, a fact he proved by repeatedly drawing upon his superior knowledge of the issues and proposing infinitely more intelligent solutions to problems. But it didn’t matter. Voters thought Bush won.

Will Trump’s likely victories in the debates be enough to close the current gap between him and Clinton in the polls? Maybe. All I know is, anyone who says it’s all over is whistling past the graveyard.

It’s all about the debates.

[A side note and thank you: thanks to more than 750 generous contributors, we were able to successfully crowdfund the civil court bond required for me to continue my lawsuit against the Los Angeles Times to the tune of more than $75,000. The next major hearing in the case is currently scheduled for March 2017. I am humbled and gratified by the commitment of so many people to free speech and freedom of expression. I will keep you posted.]

(Ted Rall is the author of “Bernie,” a biography written with the cooperation of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. His next book, the graphic biography “Trump,” comes out this Tuesday, July 26th and is now available for pre-order.)

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You Did It! $75,000 Crowdfunding Effort Succeeds, LA Times Court Bond Filed

August 18, 2016

YOU DID IT!

746 people.

$75,390.

Thanks to you, we beat back the Times’ despicable attempt to deny me a chance to prove my case in court.

Thank you so much.

Below I am posting an image of the bond filed at LA Superior Court. Amazing that so much money buys you such a crappy piece of paper! I was expecting a wax seal and gold embossing.

Here’s what happens next:

Additional donations up to $80,000 will help cover the 5% GoFundMe fee of $75,000 x .05 = $3750, plus the $1250 bond company fee, for a total of $5000.

Donations over $80,000, if any, will be applied to legal expenses such as flying from New York to Los Angeles to consult with my attorneys and to attend hearings.

At a hearing on Tuesday, August 23, the judge will be informed that we filed the required bond. That means the case moves forward. Thank you!!!

The Times’ anti-SLAPP motion is currently scheduled to be heard in March 2017. (The court could change the hearing date.) We will use the months between now and then to draft our defense to their anti-SLAPP motion.

If the judge rules for the Times, I will be hit with a judgement for the Times’ legal fees, which are expected to reach hundreds of thousands of dollars. The $75,000 bond would be applied toward that balance. The Times will go after me for the rest.

If the judge rules in our favor, the Times has the right to appeal to the Court of Appeals. Given their contemptuous behavior so far, we expect them to do that. We don’t know how long it would take to get a hearing date.

Again, if the Court of Appeals rules in the Times’ favor on anti-SLAPP, the Times will go after me for their legal fees.

If the Court of Appeals rules for me, however, we move forward toward trial in LA Superior Court on the fundamental issues of this case: wrongful termination, blacklisting, defamation, etc. We begin discovery, depositions. Finally, there is a court date.

After a verdict, of course, the  system provides for appeals to higher courts.

I am prepared for a long fight against an intransigent and unrepentant adversary, a corporate conglomerate without a conscience. I am mentally and physically strong. I have stamina and a lot of energy. Most of all, I have the truth on my side.

I want two things:

Accountability for Austin Beutner, Nick Goldberg, Paul Pringle, Deirdre Edgar, the Times, and Tronc. No one should be allowed to get away with what they did.

Exposing the corrupt relationship between the Times and the LAPD, and more generally between the press and the police, and government. In our system, you have to be rich or have (as I do) a public platform in order to get justice. It’s incumbent upon those few Americans who have the chance to fight back to show people what the system is really about: cozy backroom deals by the elites, who are determined to protect their privilege at the expense of the rest of us.

======================================
Here is the court filing document, filed Tuesday at LA Superior Court. When we realized that it would take 2-5 business days for GoFundMe to release funds and perhaps an additional full business day for the bond company to issue the bond and get it filed, a very generous friend of a friend stepped forward with a very short-term loan so we could get it filed by today’s deadline. He was certain that this fundraiser would succeed. He had blind faith — in you, in me, that justice would prevail.

He’ll be repaid by early next week, after the GoFundMe money hits my account.

Bond

BondStamp

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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Corporations Are Abusing anti-SLAPP Laws to Screw Over Workers

August 16, 2016

“It’s a sadly familiar sight in courthouses around the country: A deep-pocketed corporation, developer or government official files a lawsuit whose real purpose is to silence a critic, punish a whistleblower or win a commercial dispute.”

Sounds awful, right?

Fortunately, according to The Los Angeles Times editorial board, “That’s why California enacted a law in 1992 to give people a preemptive legal strike against frivolous lawsuits that seek to muzzle them on public issues.” According to the Digital Media Law Project, 28 states, D.C., and one U.S. territory have enacted these so-called “anti-SLAPP statutes.” (SLAPP stands for “strategic lawsuit against public participation.” A classic example was when the cattle industry sued Oprah for dissing beef.)

At first glance, anti-SLAPP seems like a good solution to a serious problem.

In theory.

In the real world, however, well-meaning legislators have created a monster. In the hands of clever corporate lawyers, anti-SLAPP laws have become a loophole to libel laws and a catchall defense for disgusting behavior. What started as a good idea has become a menace to free speech, the ability to protect one’s reputation, and the right to redress in a court of law.

As I’ve discovered personally over the last year, California’s anti-SLAPP statute is at least as likely to be used by “a deep-pocketed corporation” against a “critic” as the way the legislature originally intended, which is to say the other way around.

In July 2015 The Los Angeles Times — yes, the same paper that published the above editorial — fired me as its staff editorial cartoonist. It has since come out that they did so as a favor to Charlie Beck, the $297,000-a-year chief of the Los Angeles Police Department. Beck’s feelings were hurt because of the cartoons that I drew about him.

The cops weren’t satisfied with merely having me fired. They wanted me destroyed. So the Times also published a pair of articles that falsely portrayed me as a liar and a fabulist — death to a journalist’s reputation.

So I sued the Times for wrongful termination, blacklisting, retaliation and defamation, as well as other claims.

Initially I had trouble finding a lawyer willing to represent me on the defamation claim. California’s anti-SLAPP statute, attorneys told me, have gutted the practice of defamation law in the Golden State. Fortunately for me, as several of the state’s leading experts on defamation law told me, Times management’s behavior was so outrageous, reprehensible and ongoing that I stood a better chance of getting over the anti-SLAPP hurdle than most plaintiffs.

As most of the attorneys I consulted had predicted, one of the first things that the Times did was file an anti-SLAPP motion against me. So much for anti-SLAPP being used against “a deep-pocketed corporation…whose real purpose is to silence a critic.” The Times is owned by Tronc (formerly Tribune Publishing), a $499 million mega-corporation. The Times paid me $300 a week.

Until that pretrial anti-SLAPP motion is decided, I can’t engage in “discovery,” the process of gathering information through subpoenas and depositions essential to forming a case. As Vikram David Amar writes, “oftentimes a plaintiff who may have a valid claim will not be able to prevail because s/he will not have had enough of an opportunity to gather the evidence (through legal discovery devices like depositions and document requests) needed to prove the case.”

Because of anti-SLAPP, I must convince a judge that I am likely to prevail at an eventual trial — before the first juror has been chosen or any evidence has been discovered.

If the judge decides that I will probably lose my case, I will have to pay all of the Times’ legal fees. According to papers that the defendants filed, they expect that to amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The case would be dismissed. I would go bankrupt.

Even if I convince the judge that I’ll win, my tormentors at the Times then get a second shot at destroying my financial well-being: they can go to the Court of Appeals. By that time, of course, their legal bills will be even higher. And it’s not much of a stretch to imagine that those fees will be highly padded. Many judges take defendants at their word when it comes to the validity of legal invoices.

We’re not done.

I live in New York. As an out-of-state plaintiff, California Code 1030 provides a defendant the right to move that I be required to post a bond in order to guarantee the payment of the Times’ attorney fees should they prevail on their anti-SLAPP motion. “The Times will defend itself vigorously against Mr. Rall’s claims,” a Times spokesperson said when I sued. They sure are. They filed a motion asking the judge to require me to post a whopping $300,000 bond.

The judge knocked it down to $75,000. Unlike criminal bonds that can be purchased for 10%, however, this civil bond must be 100% collateralized. In other words, I have to come up with $75,000 in “pay to play” money by Thursday, August 18, or my case will automatically be dismissed.

And you thought this was a free country.

Happily, there are signs that anti-SLAPP madness is finally coming to an end. Setting an important precedent, Justice Vance Raye of the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento denied an anti-SLAPP motion filed by UC Davis against a former employee who claims she was fired for whistleblowing.

“The cure [anti-SLAPP] has become the disease,” wrote Raye. UC’s argument was “ at odds with the purpose of the anti-SLAPP law, which was designed to ferret out meritless lawsuits intended to quell the free exercise of First Amendment rights, not to burden victims of discrimination and retaliation with an earlier and heavier burden of proof than other civil litigants and dissuade the exercise of their right to petition for fear of an onerous attorney fee award.”

Raye’s ruling is a good start. But what’s needed is for the 28 state legislatures in anti-SLAPP states to reform the law.

If you like to read more about the case and/or contribute to my fundraiser – I am not going down without a fight – please click here or go directly to http://gofundme.com/tedrall

(Ted Rall is the author of the graphic biography “Trump: A Graphic Biography.”)

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Please Consider Helping Me In This Home Stretch

August 16, 2016

We’re doing amazingly well. We’ve raised almost $56K from 553 people! But we need $75K to pay the bond due Thursday. If you haven’t kicked in yet, please consider doing so to help us get over the finish line. If you have, please consider doing it again.

Thank you, everyone. No matter how this ends, I am awed and humbled by all of you.

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Rall v. LA Times: The Rogues Gallery

August 13, 2016

Thanks to my lawsuit, we know that the LAPD asked the LA Times to fire me as a favor to the cops because I was constantly criticizing them and their police chief. But, as Sartre said, individual actions require accountability. In that spirit, here’s a rogues gallery of the principal players and their roles in the conspiracy behind my firing last July.

LAPD Police Chief Charlie Beck

Beck

Until a few months ago, when the LA Times was forced to submit affidavits in their defense to my lawsuit for wrongful termination and defamation, Beck’s role was unknown. In multiple articles, the Times was too cute by half, claiming that they had received the sketchy audiotape and the dubious documents from the LAPD. As the following evidence shows, however, the police chief took a break from fighting crime and beating up black people to walk over to the LA Times to complain about my cartoon and accompanying blog in which I described having been roughed up by an LAPD officer who arrested me for jaywalking in 2001:

SmithDepo

They say that law-enforcement officers like him work in order to protect our freedoms. But Beck obviously never heard of the First Amendment. The First Amendment doesn’t really protect free-speech as broadly as similar statutes do in other countries, but the one thing that it does do is prevent government agencies – like the LAPD – from interfering with journalism and criticism. Beck hates the Constitution; he is un-American.

If there’s any justice, Beck will soon resign. He and the Times are claiming that he raided the LAPD evidence locker and gave the material to the paper. If that’s true, he should go. However, it looks like he’s lying. Most likely, he got the stuff from the arresting officer’s personal files. Which means that he lied about the stuff being official evidence. In that case too, he should go.

LA Times Ex-Publisher Austin Beutner

Beutner

As far as I can tell, Beutner is even more stupid than he is evil. And he is evil.

The billionaire who made his bucks raping the former Soviet Union in the 1990s is the guy at the Times who took the meeting with the police chief about little old me. The LAPD police union, the LAPPL, was a major political ally for him, so he kind of had to. However, he also should’ve thought about journalistic ethics. The last thing that the publisher of the paper that covers the police should be doing is hanging out with them. And the very last thing that he should be doing is hanging out with a guy who is asking him to fire one of the cops’ critics.

The reason I say he’s stupid is because it never occurred to him that he might be getting played by the police chief. He took Beck at face value. He wasn’t careful. He just accepted the evidence the cops gave him, handed it over to his editorial page editor, and ordered him to fire me. At least that’s how it looks right now. We’ll learn more during the discovery phase of the pre-trial.

If he’d been a journalist, or knew anything about journalism, or had any common sense, it might’ve occurred to him that the chief of police had a vested interest in getting rid of a cartoonist who keeps making fun of the chief of police. Of course, that would’ve also interfered with his own interest. After all, he was too cozy with the police to say no.

The paper let him go after I was fired.

LA Times Editorial Page Editor Nick Goldberg

Goldberg

Goldberg, the editor of the editorial pages, was a guy I barely had anything to do with. He wasn’t my usual editor. But he supervised my usual editors. He got the order to fire me from Beutner.

Now back in the day, when I started out, if a publisher had asked an editor to do something like this, to fire someone on the flimsiest of evidence, evidence that hadn’t been properly evaluated or analyzed or authenticated, evidence that really didn’t show much at all, said editor would have told said publisher to fuck himself. Probably would’ve resigned. But that’s not what Goldberg did.

Like many newspapermen nowadays, Goldberg was terrified. Most of his colleagues have been laid off. All he wanted to do was to keep his head down long enough to retire. So he was a wimp. When Beutner ordered him to let me go, he said yes sir. Without letting me talk to my editors. And not only that. He signed my death warrant. He signed the first article, the “a note to readers” intended to end my journalistic career.

Within days, Goldberg had in his hand solid proof that everything he had written was untrue. That he had lied for the cops. Even then, he kept quiet. No retraction. No resignation letter. He’s still there, drawing a six-figure salary despite his utter lack of decency.

LA Times Readers Representative Deirdre Edgar

Edgar

Deirdre Edgar seems like a relatively obscure figure in this whole fiasco. Actually, she’s very important. She wrote the second hit piece against me, the one that came out three weeks after the paper found out that I have been telling the truth and that the cops have been lying about me.

Ironically, she’s the so-called “Readers representative” – the equivalent of an ombudsman at other newspapers. She’s the person who supposed to stand up for journalistic ethics. In fact, when the paper rewrote their ethical guidelines back in 2014, she got the byline.

The irony is that among other things, those ethical guidelines require reporters to give equal time to the subjects of critical articles in order to respond. She didn’t do that. Never called. Never wrote. The same guidelines say that the reporter should meet in person with the subject of a critical article. She didn’t try to do that. There’s other stuff too. Like, you’re not supposed to willfully lie about the subject of an article. Which she did.

LA Times Editor/Publisher Davan Maharaj

Maharaj

Maharaj was the editor-in-chief when all this went down last year. His role at the time remains obscure. Tribune Publishing decided to name him the new publisher after they fired Beutner.

Whatever his role last summer, he has been at the helm since early fall 2015. All the time, he has allowed those two libelous articles about me to remain on the newspaper’s website. This, of course, despite the fact that the information inside them is false and everyone knows they’re false. If this guy had an ounce of integrity, he would resign.

Support free speech! Fight the LA Times’ demand that I pay them $75,000: gofundme.com/tedrall

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Almost One-Third of the Way There

August 12, 2016

Incredibly, we have raised almost $25,000 – one third of what is needed to cover the crazy bond that I have to turn over to the court system of Los Angeles next week in order to keep my case going – in about one third of the time allotted. Thank you everybody. You guys are awesome!

However, we need to step up the pace if we’re going to make it on time. The money has to be at a bond office by Wednesday of next week in order to arrive at the court by Thursday. So please help spread the word. Also, if you have already donated, but you think you can do more, please consider that too.

Thanks!

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SYNDICATED COLUMN: Got $75,000? The LA Times Is Trying to Bankrupt Me

August 10, 2016

SmithDepo

Got $75,000?

That’s how much The Los Angeles Times is demanding that I pay them.

After they fired me for phony reasons.

After they published lies about me.

They set out to destroy me, but the truth came out and ruined their plan. So now they’re determined to bankrupt me — by abusing the court system.

One year ago, The Los Angeles Times fired me in what became known as The Ted Rall Scandal. I’ve been their cartoonist since 2009. Never had a problem. Was never late. Never did anything wrong. My bosses never had a complaint — to the contrary, I received nothing but praise.

What I didn’t know, and my editors didn’t know to tell me, was that the political cartoonist of The Los Angeles Times isn’t allowed to criticize the police. I wish I’d been informed. I have principles, but I also have to eat. If they’d told me the cops were off-limits, I wouldn’t have criticized the LAPD, police brutality, corruption or incompetence. If I’d known that LAPD chief Charlie Beck enjoyed special most favored nation status on the LA Times editorial page, I would have left him alone.

But no one told me. So I did what cartoonists are supposed to do: I criticized and ridiculed and made fun of the cops.

Unbeknownst to me, dark forces were aligned against me.

In 2014, Tribune Publishing, the Chicago-based $499 million conglomerate that was the parent company of the LA Times, brought on a brutal, cynical billionaire named Austin Beutner as its new publisher. Beutner had made his money in the 1990s, raping the ruins of post-Soviet Russia. He had big political ambitions: mayor of Los Angeles, perhaps even governor of California.

Beutner had no experience in newspapers. Probably never even delivered one as a boy. But Beutner had what Tribune wanted: a contact list full of potential investors. As for Beutner, he figured he’d use the paper to make up for his lack of name recognition among voters. It was a match made in hell.

Beutner made good on his promise to bring cash into the troubled Tribune organization by midwifing a deal between his only political ally, the LAPD’s police union (the Los Angeles Police Protective League) and Oaktree Capital, a Beverly Hills based investment firm. The LAPPL moved its $16 billion pension fund to Oaktree. At the same time, Oaktree became the number one shareholder in Tribune. The local police owned the local paper.

The LAPPL made no secret of its appreciation. Weeks after being named publisher, Beutner was given the LAPPL’s 2014 Badge and Eagle Award for
“support[ing] the LAPD in all that they do.”

In July 2015, the fuzz called in their chit with Beutner.

As has only recently been revealed by my lawsuit against the LA Times for defamation and wrongful termination, the plot against me began with a conspiracy at the highest levels of city government and the corporate media elite.

Chief Beck secretly met with Beutner. He handed him documents, as well as a CD-ROM containing an audio recording, that he convinced Beutner would be adequate proof that I was a liar and a fabulist, and therefore sufficient legal cause for firing me. And not just for firing me. They wanted to make an example out of me. They were out to destroy me. So they published not one, but two articles — something they’d never done before, ever — calling me a liar.

I was freelance. Why not just tell me I was no longer needed? Because Beck and Beutner thought I’d be a pushover. And because they wanted to send a message to every journalist in Southern California. Don’t criticize law enforcement. If you do, your career will be over.

Times readers have never been told the source of these documents. I would never have found them if I hadn’t filed my lawsuit. In brazen violation of the newspaper’s own rules governing the ethical conduct of journalism (ironically written by the author of the second smear piece, Deirdre Edgar), Beutner and his minion who wrote the first smear piece, editorial page editor Nick Goldberg, protected Beck as an anonymous source.

The key evidence used against me, both to fire me and to use as the focus of two unusual articles published by the Times in their campaign to destroy my journalistic career, was the audio file. It contained about 20 seconds of audible speech and over six minutes of road noise.

That recording, secretly made by a police officer who arrested me for jaywalking in 2001, supposedly proved that I had been treated politely by the cop, not rudely handcuffed as I had written in the Times. Cheap and/or careless, the Times didn’t have the “evidence” authenticated or analyzed. Big mistake.

Things fell apart for the Times after my firing.

I paid to have the tape professionally enhanced. Turned out, there was a woman shouting “take off his handcuffs!” buried under all that static. I was vindicated. Independent journalists and other media outlets agreed.

Driving the point home, the LAPD public information office said that the audio never came out via official means. In other words, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck ginned up the evidence from somewhere else: probably a self-made, crappy dub made by the police officer himself 14 years before. It wasn’t official evidence. It wouldn’t have been admitted in court and it shouldn’t have been used to fire anyone — something a real journalist, not a billionaire financier, would have known.

I eventually obtained a copy of the official audio file from the police department itself via a public records act request. What a difference! It was clean. It looked different. And it was different. Without any enhancement at all, you could hear an angry crowd of people yelling at the officer about my mistreatment.

By this time, the Times’ ridiculous assault on free expression had blown up in their faces. Social media and the Internet had gone crazy. Journalists of all political stripes had come to my defense. Tribune, knowing that they had screwed up, fired Beutner so unceremoniously that he wasn’t allowed to use his own email account to say goodbye, and was escorted by security guards out of the building.

All I wanted was my job back and a retraction. An apology would be nice too. I don’t know why, even after all this, the Times is fighting this lawsuit. The way they’re acting, you would think that I was the one who had hurt them.

Their latest legal maneuver is beyond belief. Although discovery hasn’t begun yet, things haven’t been going well for them during initial hearings in court. That’s how it goes when you don’t have a legitimate defense for your indefensible actions. So their lawyer is resorting to scorched earth tactics. The last thing they want is for 12 Angelenos to listen to my case, consider both sides, and render justice.

The sleazy move their lawyer cooked up is to file an “anti-SLAPP” motion against me. California legislature passed the anti-SLAPP law to stop the following scenario: “A deep-pocketed corporation, developer or government official files a lawsuit whose real purpose is to silence a critic, punish a whistleblower or win a commercial dispute.” (Those words are by the LA Times’ editorial board, written two weeks after they smeared me!)

I’m not a deep pocketed corporation. I’m not a developer. And I’m not a government official. I’m a critic. So I’m the one this law was designed to protect.

Incredibly, the Times’ lawyer is arguing that I, an individual freelance cartoonist with a five-figure income, is quashing the Times’ free-speech rights! If they convince the judge that they are right, my case gets thrown out and – get this – I’m going to have to pay their attorneys’ fees!

Even more incredibly, they asked the judge to force me to post a $300,000 bond now, in advance, to guarantee their attorneys’ fees if they win their anti-SLAPP motion. She knocked it down to $75,000. But it’s not like the 10% bail that you hear about on TV. I owe the entire $75,000 on or before Thursday, August 18. My lawyers and I prepared a brief to fight it, but because the Los Angeles court system is so backed up, we can’t get a hearing until next summer. So another words, I either cough up $75,000 by next Thursday, or the Times gets away with what they did to me.

If you like to read more about the case and/or contribute to my fundraiser – I am not going down without a fight – please click here or go directly to http://gofundme.com/tedrall.

(Ted Rall is the author of “Bernie,” a biography written with the cooperation of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. His new book, the graphic biography “Trump: A Graphic Biography,” is now available.)

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Got $75,000?

August 10, 2016

SmithDepoJust over a year ago, the Los Angeles Times fired me. They lied about what I did. They smeared me. And when they got caught, they just kept lying. You’d think that would be enough personal destruction for one newspaper against one $300/week cartoonist. But apparently not.

I’m suing them for defamation, wrongful termination, blacklisting and five other charges. So far the case is going well. That’s because they don’t have any defense. They’re wrong, and they know it. So they’re doing everything they can do, kicking and screaming, to prevent me getting my day in court in front of jurors.

Their latest sleazy maneuver: they filed a motion demanding that I post $75,000 to guarantee their attorneys fees in the event that they prevail in a lawsuit against me. We have a counter motion ready to go. But because the Los Angeles Court system is so jammed up, we can’t get a hearing date until summer of 2017. In the meantime, the bond is due next week, on Thursday, August 18.

Bottom line: unless I get $75,000 to the court by Wednesday, August 17, my case will automatically be dismissed and the Times will win.

That’s why am asking for your help. If I can raise the $75,000, I can post a bond and keep my case going. If I prevail, the money will be returned. And I will send it back to you. So this is kind of a unique fundraiser.

Here’s the link: gofundme.com/tedrall
Please spread the word.

This case has already yielded dividends. For example, we discovered that the source of the crappy audio tape and dubious documents supplied by the police to the LA Times was none other than the chief of police himself, Charlie Beck. Beck hated me because I had drawn a lot of cartoons making fun of him and criticizing him for his tolerance of police brutality.

Can you imagine what we will discover in the event that we are allowed to go forward with the case and do full discovery? We will have access to emails, internal documents, you name it. All of them will become public records. But that won’t happen unless I get that $75 posthaste. Please read up on the case and please help out.

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PRESS RELEASE: Cartoonist Ted Rall Claims LA Times “Adds Insult to Injury” with “Bullying Financial Demands” Following Alleged Defamation, Blacklisting and Wrongful Termination

August 10, 2016

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Cartoonist Ted Rall Claims LA Times “Adds Insult to Injury” with “Bullying Financial Demands” Following Alleged Defamation, Blacklisting and Wrongful Termination

LOS ANGELES—August 9, 2016 — Shegerian & Associates, Inc., a Santa Monica-based litigation law firm specializing in employee rights, has announced that the Los Angeles Times attempted to demand $300,000 in “legal fees” from its client, the cartoonist and author Ted Rall. Rall is currently suing the Times for defamation, blacklisting, wrongful termination and breach of contract.

Shegerian & Associates founder Carney Shegerian described the Times’ request for Rall to post $300,000 to guarantee the Times’ attorney fees in the event they should win their anti-SLAPP motion as a “bully move against a freelance cartoonist by a corporation that is egregiously inverting the very anti-SLAPP statute designed to protect employees from big corporations.”

The court has since ordered the Times to lower its request to $75,000.

“It feels almost like they are forcing me to ‘pay to play’ if I am to see my day in court,” said Rall. “You’d think after what happened, they would be issuing an apology and offering me my job back, not trying to bankrupt me after wrongfully firing me.”

Rall was originally hired by the Times as an editorial cartoonist in 2009 and published approximately 300 of his cartoons and more than 60 of his blog posts in the paper between 2009 and 2015. At no time during his employment was Rall disciplined or written-up and he was consistently praised for his work.

In May of 2015, Rall created, and the Times reviewed, approved and published, a cartoon titled, “LAPD’s Crosswalk Crackdown; Don’t Police Have Something Better to Do?” In the accompanying blog post criticizing the LAPD’s crackdown against jaywalking as reported by the Times, Rall referenced his own previous experience of being falsely arrested, unduly rough-housed and handcuffed by an LAPD officer allegedly for “jaywalking.”

In July of 2015, after the LAPD contacted The Times to question the accuracy of this cartoon and blog post, the Times decided to terminate Rall within 24 hours.

In his filed complaint, Rall explained that at no point did the Times allow him to speak to his regular supervisor, or to the editorial board to discuss his case — a violation of the Times’ Ethical Guidelines. Shortly after the termination, The Times published a rare “Note to Readers,” indicating that the paper had doubts about the veracity of Rall’s blog post due to an audio recording they obtained of Rall’s original jaywalking incident. The note also stated that the Times would no longer be publishing Rall’s work.

The Times failed to follow the standard of procedure for authenticating evidence and thus did not have grounds to publicly accuse Rall of falsifying information on his blog entry. After the Times’ note was published, Rall took it upon himself to have the audio examined by experts. The enhanced version of the audio supported Rall’s version of the encounter, and he presented this to the Times. Despite this exonerating evidence, the Times published yet another article further defaming Rall.

“The Times’ suspicions about the veracity of Mr. Rall’s blog post were unfounded in that they failed to properly investigate the accusations and refused to acknowledge proof that Mr. Rall’s blog post was, in fact, accurate,” said Shegerian. “The public defamation and subsequent blacklisting of our client following blatantly wrongful termination should be enough of a slap in Mr. Rall’s face, but the demand now for this freelance cartoonist to pay the Times’ legal fees in advance of a trial demonstrates that not only does the LA Times not play by its own rules employment-wise, as we will demonstrate in court, it behaves in a vindictive and unfair manner as well.”

(Case no. BC613703)

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Located in Santa Monica, Shegerian & Associates is a law firm specializing in protecting the rights of employees who have been wronged by their employers. Richly experienced in labor and employment law and possessing an unparalleled success record as litigators (Carney Shegerian, Trial Lawyer of the Year Award winner for 2013, has won 73 jury trials in his career, including 31 seven figure verdicts), Shegerian & Associates is passionately dedicated to serving the needs of its clients. For more information about the firm, visit www.ShegerianLaw.com

Media Contact: To arrange interviews about this case with Carney Shegerian or Ted Rall, please contact Paul Williams, 310/569-0023, paulwilliams@shegerianlaw.com.

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