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Chinese Billionaire Got A US Court To Issue An Unconstitutional Gag Order On A Critic
from the this-is-bad dept
Eugene Volokh has an incredible -- and incredibly disturbing -- story about how Jia Yueting, a Chinese billionaire, appears to have convinced a Washington state court to issue an unconstitutional gag order against a critic who lives in Washington state. Jia is famous for his company LeEco in China, as well as his attempt to create an electric car giant competitor to Tesla in the US called Faraday Future. Almost exactly a year ago, we wrote about how Faraday Future was flailing with a series of incredible stories leaking out of the company. A large number of top execs were fleeing the company and there were reports of questionable activities, including Jia demanding that Faraday Future employees design a car for LeEco, without payment or credit. In the past year, it does not appear that things have gotten much better for Jia, and he was just ordered to return to China to deal with debts that appear to be piling up.
China has ordered a tech tycoon to come home and face the music.
The country's markets watchdog on Monday demanded LeEco founder Jia Yueting return to China before the end of the year to fix his business empire's financial woes.
The China Securities Regulatory Commission said that Jia, whose whereabouts are unknown, has not made good on earlier promises to provide interest-free loans to the embattled company.
Not surprisingly, there are many online critics of Jia. One of them is a resident of Washington state, named Yingqiong Gu who criticized Jia on WeChat, the ever-present social network/communications app that is insanely popular in China. Back in October, Jia sued Guto try to get the criticism to stop. As Volokh notes, it is entirely possible that Gu made defamatory statements about Jia. But the First Amendment tends to reject any attempt to silence speech. While some states will allow injunctions against defamatory speech, that tends to be only after the content has been determined by a court to actually be defamatory. Here, however, the court agreed first to a temporary restraining order less than a week after the complaint was filed, and a preliminary injunction a few weeks later.
Now, some of what's described in the complaint goes beyond speech, and includes what could be considered harassing behavior:
Defendant has further followed Mr. Jia while he goes about his daily activities, including investor meetings Mr. Jia attends and the Los Angeles-area restaurants he has visited. Finally, Defendant has identified and publicized sensitive personal information, including Mr. Jia's current address and photos of his family.
I'm not sure if that's enough to constitute "harassing" behavior, but maybe. If the restraining order were limited to that, perhaps it would be acceptable. But it appears the real target of the gag order is to silence Gu and his criticism of Jia. Here's the crux of Jia's complaint:
Defendant has been publishing defamatory statements concerning Plaintiff on social media platforms and to journalists, in an effort to harm Mr. Jia's reputation and sow distrust among potential investors and employees of Faraday while Mr. Jia is in the process of trying to raise capital to fund Faraday's continued growth. These defamatory statements include claims that Plaintiff has engaged in money laundering, cheated investors as part of a Ponzi scheme, attempted to evade Chinese authorities by relocating to the United States, created shelters to protect assets from creditors, and raised money from Chinese-national investors in a purported racist scheme to transfer wealth to non-Chinese individuals. The publication of these false statements has harmed Mr. Jia's and Faraday's reputation at a critical time for the company as it continues to raise capital needed to begin mass production of its vehicles.
The filing in Washington follows on a similar filing Jia made against Gu in California, in which another temporary restraining order was put in place against Gu's apparent "harassing, harmful activities." Jia's complaint in Washington claims that Gu is violating that order because he "continued to publish defamatory statements." But, again, speech and actions are not the same. Publishing criticism is not harassment, and if the content has not yet been judged to be defamatory, a court can't block it.
But it did.
The restraining order is quite broad. Rather than just barring any harassing activities it orders Gu to remove content he's posted:
Defendant, including his agents, employees, or representatives or anyone acting on their behalf, are required to immediately remove posts on WeChat.com that contain defamatory statements concerning Plaintiff and/or reveal private information concerning Plaintiff and his family...
And it blocks him from writing more:
Defendant including his agents, employees or representatives or anyone acting on their behalf, are further enjoined from publishing or causing to be published any posts or commentary concerning Plaintiff or his family on WeChat.com, TouTiao.com or any other internet location or website.
That language was in the requested TRO. There's a handwritten, barely legible, exception which states that he can post "objective facts from public records" but "may not include any commentary, editorial comments, or other statements that attack plaintiff's credibility or reputation.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...issue-unconstitutional-gag-order-critic.shtml
________________________________________________
The corporate dems in Washigton state need to go. From Cantwell, to Murray, to Inslee, they are bought and paid for corporate stooge's. They wake up in the morning cowering to Boeing, and go to to bed butt sore, and satisfied.
Now, some will argue that they don't see how this shows the democrats corruption, but those people are asking you to believe that this judge doesn't understand the first amendment. If you believe that, Trump has some real estate he's looking to sell you, something about Arizona ocean front property. Seems legit.
It isn't enough to defeat the Republicans in 2018, and 2020. Nothing will change until we clean our own house. That must be done in the primaries. Remember this, and remember it well. If you don't want to have to choose between a corporate dem, and a corporate Republican in your state and local elections, you have to vote in your primary.
Throw the bums out!
Discuss.....
from the this-is-bad dept
Eugene Volokh has an incredible -- and incredibly disturbing -- story about how Jia Yueting, a Chinese billionaire, appears to have convinced a Washington state court to issue an unconstitutional gag order against a critic who lives in Washington state. Jia is famous for his company LeEco in China, as well as his attempt to create an electric car giant competitor to Tesla in the US called Faraday Future. Almost exactly a year ago, we wrote about how Faraday Future was flailing with a series of incredible stories leaking out of the company. A large number of top execs were fleeing the company and there were reports of questionable activities, including Jia demanding that Faraday Future employees design a car for LeEco, without payment or credit. In the past year, it does not appear that things have gotten much better for Jia, and he was just ordered to return to China to deal with debts that appear to be piling up.
China has ordered a tech tycoon to come home and face the music.
The country's markets watchdog on Monday demanded LeEco founder Jia Yueting return to China before the end of the year to fix his business empire's financial woes.
The China Securities Regulatory Commission said that Jia, whose whereabouts are unknown, has not made good on earlier promises to provide interest-free loans to the embattled company.
Not surprisingly, there are many online critics of Jia. One of them is a resident of Washington state, named Yingqiong Gu who criticized Jia on WeChat, the ever-present social network/communications app that is insanely popular in China. Back in October, Jia sued Guto try to get the criticism to stop. As Volokh notes, it is entirely possible that Gu made defamatory statements about Jia. But the First Amendment tends to reject any attempt to silence speech. While some states will allow injunctions against defamatory speech, that tends to be only after the content has been determined by a court to actually be defamatory. Here, however, the court agreed first to a temporary restraining order less than a week after the complaint was filed, and a preliminary injunction a few weeks later.
Now, some of what's described in the complaint goes beyond speech, and includes what could be considered harassing behavior:
Defendant has further followed Mr. Jia while he goes about his daily activities, including investor meetings Mr. Jia attends and the Los Angeles-area restaurants he has visited. Finally, Defendant has identified and publicized sensitive personal information, including Mr. Jia's current address and photos of his family.
I'm not sure if that's enough to constitute "harassing" behavior, but maybe. If the restraining order were limited to that, perhaps it would be acceptable. But it appears the real target of the gag order is to silence Gu and his criticism of Jia. Here's the crux of Jia's complaint:
Defendant has been publishing defamatory statements concerning Plaintiff on social media platforms and to journalists, in an effort to harm Mr. Jia's reputation and sow distrust among potential investors and employees of Faraday while Mr. Jia is in the process of trying to raise capital to fund Faraday's continued growth. These defamatory statements include claims that Plaintiff has engaged in money laundering, cheated investors as part of a Ponzi scheme, attempted to evade Chinese authorities by relocating to the United States, created shelters to protect assets from creditors, and raised money from Chinese-national investors in a purported racist scheme to transfer wealth to non-Chinese individuals. The publication of these false statements has harmed Mr. Jia's and Faraday's reputation at a critical time for the company as it continues to raise capital needed to begin mass production of its vehicles.
The filing in Washington follows on a similar filing Jia made against Gu in California, in which another temporary restraining order was put in place against Gu's apparent "harassing, harmful activities." Jia's complaint in Washington claims that Gu is violating that order because he "continued to publish defamatory statements." But, again, speech and actions are not the same. Publishing criticism is not harassment, and if the content has not yet been judged to be defamatory, a court can't block it.
But it did.
The restraining order is quite broad. Rather than just barring any harassing activities it orders Gu to remove content he's posted:
Defendant, including his agents, employees, or representatives or anyone acting on their behalf, are required to immediately remove posts on WeChat.com that contain defamatory statements concerning Plaintiff and/or reveal private information concerning Plaintiff and his family...
And it blocks him from writing more:
Defendant including his agents, employees or representatives or anyone acting on their behalf, are further enjoined from publishing or causing to be published any posts or commentary concerning Plaintiff or his family on WeChat.com, TouTiao.com or any other internet location or website.
That language was in the requested TRO. There's a handwritten, barely legible, exception which states that he can post "objective facts from public records" but "may not include any commentary, editorial comments, or other statements that attack plaintiff's credibility or reputation.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...issue-unconstitutional-gag-order-critic.shtml
________________________________________________
The corporate dems in Washigton state need to go. From Cantwell, to Murray, to Inslee, they are bought and paid for corporate stooge's. They wake up in the morning cowering to Boeing, and go to to bed butt sore, and satisfied.
Now, some will argue that they don't see how this shows the democrats corruption, but those people are asking you to believe that this judge doesn't understand the first amendment. If you believe that, Trump has some real estate he's looking to sell you, something about Arizona ocean front property. Seems legit.
It isn't enough to defeat the Republicans in 2018, and 2020. Nothing will change until we clean our own house. That must be done in the primaries. Remember this, and remember it well. If you don't want to have to choose between a corporate dem, and a corporate Republican in your state and local elections, you have to vote in your primary.
Throw the bums out!
Discuss.....
Point is it's done all the time with binding consequences. If it were a case about false advertising would you be citing the First?
