George Zimmerman v. Pete Buttigieg & Elizabeth Warren
From today’s decision, by Judge Charlene Edwards Honeywell (M.D. Fla.):
{The following statement of facts is derived from Plaintiff’s Complaint, the allegations of which the Court must accept as true in ruling on the instant Motion to Dismiss.} On February 26, 2012, twenty-nine year-old George Zimmerman discharged a single shot to stop seventeen year-old Trayvon Martin from assaulting him, following an incident between the two at the Retreat at Twin Lakes townhome community in Sanford, Florida where Zimmerman lived and was a member of the neighborhood watch.
Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder and acquitted by a jury on July 13, 2013. He and his family have been the target of death threats ever since. Due to the massive publicity after the shooting, the nationwide protests demanding his arrest without cause, the subsequent 2013 trial and his acquittal of all charges, and the acts of protest and violence that continue to this day in the name of Trayvon Martin, Zimmerman alleges that his name is 100% synonymous with Trayvon Martin and the incident that resulted in Martin’s death.
The actions giving rise to this lawsuit occurred on February 5, 2020. That day, defendant Pete Buttigieg made the following tweet:
Buttigieg is an American politician and was a 2020 candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States of America. He allegedly had 1,600,000 followers on … Twitter ….
Elizabeth Warren, a nationally known public figure and 2020 candidate for the Democratic party nomination for President of the United States, also tweeted about Trayvon Martin that day. She tweeted the following statement to her 3,600,000 followers on Twitter:
The court dismissed the lawsuit because it concluded that it lacked personal jurisdiction over Buttigieg and Warren, but in a way that should be easily cured by amendment:
The parties have both discussed the Florida Supreme Court’s ruling on a very similar case, Internet Sols. Corp. v. Marshall (Fla. 2010)[, which held] … that “allegedly defamatory material about a Florida resident placed on the Web and accessible in Florida constitutes an ‘electronic communication into Florida’ when the material is accessed (or ‘published’) in Florida.” …
“In the context of the World Wide Web, given its pervasiveness, an alleged tortfeasor who posts allegedly defamatory material on a website has intentionally made the material almost instantly available everywhere the material is accessib
Article from Latest – Reason.com
