By: Derek Hawkins//December 21, 2015//
7th Circuit Court of Appeals
Case Name: Kevin McCarthy v. Patricia Fuller
Case No: 15-1839; 14-3308
Officials: POSNER, WILLIAMS, and SYKES, Circuit Judges
Practice Area: Defamation – Injunction
Judge issues injunction without sound basis.
“But this is not a case in which we have to decide whether defamation can ever be enjoined because, even if it can be, the injunction issued by the district judge cannot be sustained. An injunction against defamatory statements, if permissible at all, must not through careless drafting forbid statements not yet determined to be defamatory, for by doing so it could restrict lawful expression. The injunction that the district judge issued in this case was of that character, owing to its inclusion of vague, open-ended provisions for which there is no support in the jury verdict or, so far as appears, in the district judge’s own evaluation of the evidence. We have no jury findings as to which statements were defamatory, and the plaintiffs didn’t even ask the judge to address that absence, so he didn’t. As illustrative of the injunction’s resulting excessive breadth, notice that it orders Hartman to take down his website, which would prevent him from posting any nondefamatory messages on his blog; it would thus enjoin lawful speech”
Affirmed in Part, Reversed and Remanded in Part