Governor Jesse Ventura, a/k/a James G. Janos, Plaintiff, v. Chris Kyle, Defendant. The dispute arose from an alleged altercation described in Chris Kyle’s autobiography. The alleged fight occurred between Jesse Ventura and Kyle during a SEAL’s wake. In the autobiography Kyle writes that the altercation arose after Ventura made offensive comments about the SEALs. Ventura maintains that the passage is fabricated. Ventura asserts claims for defamation, invasion of privacy and unjust enrichment. Kyle being a SEAL, he did not have any sort of journalistic ethical training. It would seem safe to assume that he was not adequately supervised when writing his autobiography, although Ventura was not specifically named as the man in the book …show more content…
If the statements made by Kyle were indeed false then he could have gotten in trouble because he would not be following the best practices for an autobiographical novel. Had his book been a fictional novel, he would have been within reason for the fabricated account. Kyle could not have really built safeguards because he never revealed the name of the man detailed in the dispute. What got him in trouble for defamation was that during his book media tour he repeatedly name-dropped Ventura as the aggressor in their altercation. Due to Kyle’s lack of training he may not have realized the legal significance of naming Ventura. Ventura being a public figure, should have known that questioning a military hero could have brought him a lot of backlash whether or not the statements were true or false. It is plain and simple. Kyle went to court for revealing Ventura’s identity during the media tour. If Kyle would have not done this he could have prevented going to court. Also, Kyle could have apologized or just even said that his comments were not true about Ventura. Kyle basically brought it upon …show more content…
The dispute that started everything was when anonymous commenters accused them of being sexual deviants, molesters, and drug dealers on Topix. These anonymous people were not adueqtaley trained, while making defamation remarks about Mark and Rhonda. These people were not supervised either. Obviously these people were not acting professionally, to make unethical remarks like that about people especially when it is anonymous. They knew this would be defamation that is why they had their safeguards of being anonymous so they could maybe avoid a legal dispute. Before even making those remarks all the people that were involved should have known the legal actions that could have been brought upon them for the negative actions. I do not think these people could have really done anything besides apologizing to prevent from going to court. Mark and Rhonda’s reputation was hurt and it would be really hard to take that negative image away from all those harsh and nasty statements that were made. They only possible way maybe is to say that everything they said about them was not true. that caused them to move out of town and lose Rhonda’s business. According to Mark, "You can't post anonymous lies on the Internet without suffering the consequences." This group of people making these untrue statements knew the consequences of their actions, they knew it