I read the complaint on line at TPM when it was first filed, and it wasn’t even coherent.
I am a lawyer and read the court’s decision so you don’t have to. What this demonstrates is what a complete moron Page actually is. He represented himself and filed a FOUR HUNDRED PAGE complaint. While the judged noted that the “lawsuit lacked factual accusations of defamation, according to the court documents,” that is NOT the reason it was dismissed. The reason it was dismissed is something every lawyer learns very early in Tort Law 101: You can’t sue the king without the king’s permission, i.e., the court has no subject matter jurisdiction when the federal government will not permit itself to be sued.
Furthermore, if Page read the decision, he does NOT have permission to replead the case. In fact, the court will not permit him to do it unless he provides a letter of “no more than three pages” that convinces the court that he can sue the federal government without the its permission. The court seems to scoff at the prospect of him ever being able to accomplish that. Beyond that, which I guess could be dictum, the court notes that he also fails on the merits.
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Clarification: The complaint is against two entities: Oath, which owns Yahoo, and a federal agency that runs Voice of America. It is the latter that is being dismissed here. The court notes at the end of the decision that it has writing a separate opinion, not yet in TPM, that also dismisses the Oath suit on other grounds.
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Suggest TPM publish the court’s Oath (Yahoo) opinion
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This article and the headline are WRONG. This suit was NOT dismissed vis-a-vis Yahoo. It was dismissed as against the BBG, US government agency that controls Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, etc. Read the decision! TPM, please fix this. And the grounds were narrow - that such suits are not permitted against the US government. I’m not a Twitter user - maybe someone else can tweet the author and point this out.
If you’re lucky this: @nicole_lafond will get her attention…