SLAPP Suits: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

lawsuits the reason the sentence Greta thong burg allegedly killed Jeffrey Epstein has the word allegedly in it look we'll get to the main substance of our story in a little bit but before we do I actually need to give you a quick update on something you may remember that in 2017 we add a piece on the coal industry that touched on this man Bob Murray the then CEO of Murray energy the largest privately held coal company in America in our piece we discussed his closeness to the President Trump his company's lawsuits to block a rule intended to limit - exposure to coal dust and his insistence that a deadly 2007 mine collapse was the result of a naturally occurring earthquake something decidedly at odds with a government investigation which found that it was caused by unauthorized mining practices now before the show went out Murray's attorneys had sent us two separate letters warning us that if we aired the story he would sue and threatening that home box office is in for the fight of its existence which that might actually be true but not because of his lawsuit it's because Game of Thrones prequels including Game of Thrones the college's Game of Thrones Winterfell Valley High and throne babies battle for the rattle won't be out for at least a year HBO's gonna be fine it's gonna be fine but you may know we went ahead with the story anyway and this happened comedian John Oliver is the target of a lawsuit by one of the country's largest privately owned coal companies Oliver strongly criticized Murray Energy Corporation and CEO Robert Murray Sunday and his HBO show last night we last week tonight it's true Bob Murray sued us after that episode of last night week last week tonight's edge although and this is true that's not the title of our show and frankly I expect better from an esteemed program like CBS morning night this morning hey you up our name we up yours that was over two years ago and ever since because the case has been in litigation we haven't been able to discuss it but recently Murray actually dropped the lawsuit so I have some good news I can finally tell you exactly what happened which is honestly worth doing not only because it's a crazy story but because it actually points to a much bigger problem here but first a background on the lawsuit itself in it Murray listed what he found objectionable in our piece including that we described him as someone who looks like a geriatric dr. evil which we did and he does and also that we arranged for a staff member to dress up in a squirrel costume and deliver the message each ship Bob and actually don't don't even remember that happening can we just quickly can we just a moment check the tape it's me now to you each it bad fair enough my mistake we did it it's funny the things you forget that each it check was actually a reference to a real thing that one of Murray's minors wrote on a bonus check that he received that the background to that story was that Murray had implemented a bonus program to his miners based on the amount of coal they extracted his workers union objected to that believed he would have an adverse impact on safety in the mines and when Murray did it anyway the miner returned his bonus check off by the way $3.22 with the words each Bob written on it and the company tried to fire him for that which seems pretty excessive maybe that message was just an invitation to eat at Bob the airport Express version of Bob Evans need need a slick biscuit and some sake sausage slop before your flight then you have gotta come on down [Music] we've all heard the jingle anyway Murray's lawsuit against us asked for damages because he claimed that nothing has ever stressed him more than our quote vicious and untruthful attack which is odd thing to say given that as I just mentioned he oversaw a company whose mine collapse in Utah resulted in the deaths of nine people it went on to say that we attacked Murray in a forum in which he had no opportunity to defend himself which is just not how anything works and besides after launching his lawsuit Murray did defend himself and very publicly will pursue it to the fullest this is a tragedy and American businessmen had better take note as to what they are trying to do with me a guy who's done nothing in his life but follow the law create jobs and do everything I could as best I could for our country these people are evil they're very evil hey hey well I think evil is a bit much there look you can say a lot of things about me for instance that I look like a toucan who can't sleep without a nightlight or but my voice sounds like Jude Law if you had a kazoo stuck in his throats but evil seems like a bit of an exaggeration now obviously the lawsuit was a effort to silence us perhaps best exemplified by a motion that Murray filed to try and get a gag order to prevent us from rebroadcasting the story or even having it up online and for the record the piece is still on the Internet's big time and you can actually find it at still on the Internet big time calm so beautiful short cut so it was no surprise when the case was dismissed by the West Virginia judge who heard it last February and at that point we figured this whole saga was over right well wrong because Murray then filed an appeal to the West Virginia Supreme Court and here's a fun side note one of the judges set to hear our case was Justice Allen Laurie and that name weirdly ranks something of a bell for us and then we remembered that in 2015 we actually does did a segment on elected judges that commented on one of his campaign ads here is a clip from that show hi I'm Alan Laurie for our Supreme Court it's la pre is in law and free this is my house come on in there's the kitchen something smells good in my family room my wife Kelly law free in our son justice law free that's right justice Lockwood yeah I called my son justice I called my dog preamble and I call my penis the gavel bow for me oopsie I mean as far as things to say about a judge before he makes a ruling on your case goes claiming that he calls his penis the gavel is maybe not the best choice even though look at him he clearly does so so we were naturally pretty concerned at this point but then in a bizarre twist all four justices of the state Supreme Court including justice Lorie were impeached in a scandal over inappropriate spending so our case wound up just sitting there for over a year until a few months ago when out of nowhere Murray's team offered to drop their lawsuit impossibly related news Murray energy recently announced it will be reorganizing under bankruptcy though you should know Bob Murray will remain the company's chairman but we did wonder what was the point of him putting us through all of this in the first place well I would argue it's because winning the case was never really his goal and that brings us to the larger issue that we're going to talk about tonight slap soos slap is an acronym that stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation these are frivolous suits with no legal merits specifically designed to stifle public debate or dissent and these happen all the time and Murray is not alone in seemingly using lawsuits to punish and intimidate his critics in fact one of his good friends has openly called for changes that would make it easier to file them I'm gonna open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles we can sue them and win lots of money so we're gonna open up those libel laws folks and we're gonna have people sue you like you never got sued before it's through Trump has been as enthusiastic about opening up libel laws as he's been unenthusiastic about opening up a birthday present from Tiffany look I know it's a tie you know it's a tie the only thing that isn't a tie is how much I love my daughter's trunk chuck is famously liturgist and has launched a number of what I would argue are slap suits for instance when journalist Tim O'Brien reported in a book that sources close to Trump claimed his net worth was much lower than he claimed and only somewhere between 150 to 250 million Trump did not take that well when the book came out he didn't feel very good about it he ultimately sued me for defamation I think it's the biggest libel lawsuit in US history he sued me for five billion dollars it's true Trump sued that man for five billion dollars and think about that that means if Trump had won that lawsuit he would have been worth five point two billion dollars that's a lot of money he'd be a billionaire look Trump lost of course and afterward he openly admitted that he knew he couldn't win saying I did it to make his life miserable which I'm happy about which honestly makes sense doesn't it because in Trump's heart he's just a vindictive bad man he's the kind of guy who thinks the movie Sophie's Choice is about a woman who got to give up one of her children but the Trump statement there actually gets to the key characteristic of slap suits the whole point is to put the defendant through a difficult painful experience and even if cases fail in lower courts as they often do the plaintiffs can find ways to extend them through intensive discovery requests depositions and appeals that drain the target's time and resources and alarmingly journalists are not the only ones targeted with slap suits in some cases they can be used to silence citizen activists take the residents of Uniontown Alabama after a waste disposal company agreed to store toxic coal ash in a landfill near their homes some members of a local group posted about their concerns on their Facebook page but in 2016 the company behind the landfill sued four members of the group for 30 million dollars which is a ridiculous amount to sue anyone for let along people living in a community where the median household income is just $14,000 although to be fair the attorney representing the landfill claimed that that 30 million dollar figure wasn't actually as bad as it sounds the 30 million dollars I think his bit it actually was 15 there were two counts but they each contain 15 oh that's okay it's not 30 million dollars it's two counts of 15 million dollars well you could say it's five counts of six million dollars or 30 counts of 1 million or 3 billion counts each containing one cent the point is math is fun now now thankfully after the ACLU stepped in to help the residents defend themselves the company voluntarily withdrew the lawsuit but the experience clearly left its mark on the community it has scared a lot of people in his ear for speaking up because those individual are afraid to get their back legs not knowing that that's just a scare tactic to get you to leave things alone so they can continue their power and control to do what they want to do yeah she's exactly right but the problem with scare tactics is that they work because things that could hurt you are scary the only people who aren't scared of anything look like this and look at that smiling idiot able to feel joy because he believes more than literally anything in the world that his soul has been liberated from 75 million-year-old alien spirits that a psychiatrist helped paralyze under the pretense of income tax inspections seems nice Tommy Boy seems real nice the thing is pretty much everyone from judges to legal scholars agrees that slap suits are a scourge that is why 30 states have some form of anti slap laws which vary significantly but broadly can enable defendants to force plaintiffs to justify their claim early on and if they can't do that the case is not only dismissed but in some states the defendant is then awarded attorneys fees now when they are well crafted these laws can strike an important balance between protecting legitimate claims and deterring time-wasting the problem is 20 states don't have those laws and with no federal anti slap legislation plaintiffs can simply file a suit in one of those States one of which is West Virginia and that is actually where Bob Murray sued us despite the fact that neither he nor I live there and we are far from the only critics that he sued over the years it's not the first time Murray has sued a journalist for coverage he saw unfavorably according to the Washington Post he's filed at least nine lawsuits against journalists and their news organizations between 2001 and 2015 for reports that they saw as critical and since Murray likes to sue we're not gonna say another word about now I I get I get that he is clearly joking there but that is also the exact culture of fear that Murray may be trying to create here lawsuits like his make people think twice before reporting on his business or pointing things out like the fact that Bob Murray's general facial expression answers the question what would it look like if an egg was mentally undressing you and I would knock you eyes up here egg and I would argue some of Murray suits have clearly been attempts to bully people into silence sometimes over incredibly trivial slights he sued an editorial cartoonist over this unflattering cartoon of him which is just pathetic who sues a cartoonist you think I'm gonna go to court over this thing that I found online which appears to be me presenting a tiered cake made with syringes condoms and broken glass I can only assume that's a metaphor for this show in which case nailed it no notes blowing is also through this couple James and Lisa CEO Xie in 2012 they held a short protest outside Murray Energy's Ohio headquarters with only about 20 people marching around it looked like this and that has to be the least intimidating protest I have ever seen one sign calls him mr. Murray and another is in serif font it is less a protest and more an interoffice memo but but Murray nevertheless sued not only the CEO Shia's but also a local newspaper the chagrin Valley Times for their coverage of it now both the COCs and the newspaper beats Murray's claims for defamation bus he tied them both up in appeals for years and the newspapers defense cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in fact the appellate court judge even explicitly wrote in his decision that Murray suit shows why Ohio should adopt an anti slap statute putting out of the paper had completely removed all their coverage of Murray from their site which the judge said was an example of the chilling effects a suit like this has and that is the point here lawsuits are like famous Instagram punks they don't have to work to be considered very very successful and by cultivating a reputation for being aggressively litigious Murray may have actually got what he wanted and successfully applied a chokehold on how he is covered and while it is hard to show you an unreported story in researching this piece we did actually stumble on to ongoing lawsuits involving Murray that have got almost no press which is honestly strange because once you hear the details I think you'll agree that they we should have now in one Murray discloses that two women who had worked for him had alleged harassment and the perpetration of a hostile work environment by mr. Murray and while he denies those claims he also makes paying those women considerable sums of money in confidential settlements in a separate ongoing lawsuit a different former employee alleges there were numerous attempts by Murray to kiss her on the lips pulling it into him to quote Copperfield and calling her into his office on one occasion to give him hot water with lemon while he was wearing nothing but his underwear and what possible thought process could have led to that well let's see I'm horny I've got some a little bit of a sore throat I'd really like to solve both problems in a way that makes a female employee feel subhuman wait a minute I think I've got it Bob you've done it again you clever little coal Goblin but wait wait because it gets worse the same complaint also claims that Murray had the plaintiff on more than one occasion get on her hands and knees to locate or pick up items for him including one time when she was required to find a small hard object he had dropped and he only told her after she found it that it was a kidney stone he fished out of the toilet after pass again yeah yeah yeah I know that that is absolutely nauseating to remember you chose this you all chose to be here everyone in this audience could have gone to sea stop tonight instead tickets are now available from $50 that's a great deal for a classic New York show and sure it's not gonna blow your mind it stomp but but it's been around for nearly 30 years for good reason and that reason is at no point did they force their audience to imagine this man fishing out his own kidney stone from a toilet it's a good show now that now I have to sell you Murray denies all of those allegations which he says are concocted and claims that the woman is using the litigation as a vehicle to harass and publicly embarrass him in an attempt to strong-arm him into a settlement although I will also tell you that one of her colleagues backed her up in a separate deposition saying she told her the kidney stone story at the time and had described Murray as screaming at her to find it fight it and what was possibly the rush there was Murray honestly worried that someone else was going to find his people first I got it I got Bob's rock I'm gonna be a millionaire it's genuinely hard to find the right response to all of that once you've heard it although I do think a seven-foot squirrel quoting a justifiably angry miner may have actually said it best each it man exactly beautifully put the point is it's a little weird that these lawsuits didn't get wider coverage these are serious allegations of workplace misconduct involving the chairman of the country's largest private coal company a highly public figure who constantly practive at his closeness to the president and his role in shaping energy and environmental policy an old okie that one reason might be the organization's are justifiably wary of getting sued by Murray because even if they are baseless his lawsuits can do major damage ours wound up costing over $200,000 in legal fees and even though our insurance covered part of it and we were lucky that HBO stood by us this lawsuit was infuriating took up a lot of time and resources and resulted in a tripling of our local insurance premiums despite the fact that to reiterate we won this case here's the thing we badly need effective anti slap loss nationwide to deter powerful people like Bob Murray from using the courts to shut down people's legitimate dissent and I know that after tonight Murray will probably sue us again even though everything I've said has been rigorously vetted by our lawyers who may I add are getting very tired with us because well we reached out to Murray last week to review the details that we plan to include in this piece he wrote a letter back not address directly to us but to our bosses at AT&T and HBO saying we were falsely vilifying him launching scurrilous attacks and arguing that none of his lawsuits are slap suits which they absolutely are so I guess here we go again it is yet another Bob Murray attempts to bully people into silence and he's been doing this for decades but you know what I will stand behind our first piece and I'll stand behind this one and as for the jokes that we made about him we are more than covered there the judge in our case pointed out that the Supreme Court has consistently protected loose figurative language that cannot reasonably be understood to convey facts about someone basically jokes are fine and I've got to say it would be really tempting to say a bunch of loose figurative things about Bob Murray right now and not not just on our behalf but on behalf of every small newspaper and individual that he sued and on behalf of every employee who's built in ill-treated by his company and who may have wanted to tell him to say eat but couldn't and here is where I actually have some bad news and some good news for you the bad news is the last two years have honestly just been too exhausting so I'm afraid I am NOT going to say anything more about Bob Murray tonight the good news is why would I when I can simply sing it instead he went to court against the world's worst sport and learned important lessons on the way we spoke with perfect camp and got accused of slander because Bob Murray wants to make us pay so even though he'll threaten legal Armageddon we have just one tiny thing to say Bob Murray can go himself today [Applause] don't be better respond to Bob Mary's complete please welcome to the show the suck my balls pop dancers [Applause] watch he went to the Louvre and spinet Mona Lisa's meet Phil the rocket with Barbies and you shot it into space keep lunch and nancy kerrigan and watch the cry4ba commanded us to find a man that started one that's right if we discuss Bob Murray in a way no reasonable person could construe this factual we can say whatever the we like so come on everyone let's head to the streets [Applause] Wow he'll stroll into a stranger's home in there weezing protected speech to tell Bob Marie to eat Bob Marie is that the guy who dipped his goals in my hot dog water that's exactly who I'm talking about can I bring my car it's not ideal it'll be fine if I leave it here right [Music] Cosby's drug supplier Jeffrey app stop stop stop stop John as HBO's legal counsel please stop I have something very important to say Bob Murray walked through the door he wasn't wearing pants that day has taken falls on full display cram that mop his anal balls broke his butt cheeks far and wide he told the tourists to look inside grab some sweets these are all real things Bob Murray did see in court about Bob Murray I believe you've heard of him you mean the Zodiac killer say about here [Music] man Fox [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you you

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 16,864,562

Rating: 4.9312582 out of 5

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Id: UN8bJb8biZU

Length: 26min 24sec (1584 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 10 2019

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[u/JackCoolStove]

This is the best thing I have seen in a while.

[u/pookamatic]

The suck my balls, Bob dancers!

[u/Fataleo]

Why is this guy so hated?

[u/[deleted]]

That is the best show I have ever seen. And I work backstage in musical theatre. Please never stop Mr Oliver!!!!

[u/Hiei2k7]

SEE YA IN COURT, FUCKFACE!

I'm dying of laughter on the train and people are looking at me like I'm a basket case!!!

[u/1337lolguyman]

www.stillontheinternetbigtime.com

It's actually real lmao

[u/Secret_agent_nope]

I’ve never watched this show before, and I will be now. Thanks Bob Murray, eat shit.

[u/thedrizztman]

The emphasis on that last 'shit' hit so hard. It was perfection.