Getting sued, even getting threatened with a lawsuit, is a chilling experience. And it sure takes the edge off the belief that you're just doing your job.
Over at the Post-Gazette, I can't even imagine what writers Len Boselovic and Patricia Sabatini are going through in the wake of yet another lawsuit by Mylan, the target of their excellent investigative reporting, against them and the Post-Gazette. This new suit expresses anger over the same underlying circumstances that framed Mylan's first lawsuit, filed back in August and now pending in federal court, where the PG has moved to dismiss it.
The first suit accused the PG of appropriating confidential information and using it to impugn the company. The new suit accuses the PG of reporting false information.
Even non-lawyers will note some incongruities here. The first lawsuit gave the impression that Mylan acknowledged that the reporting was accurate; Mylan was upset about how the PG went about its work. The second lawsuit clearly accuses the PG of defamation -- reporting false information. So, Mylan: Is it true, or is it false? The company can't have it both ways. It's always possible that some information was true and some was false. But the news reports (not only in the PG, but elsewhere) suggest strongly that it's all the same stuff. And what about suing twice? I haven't seen the lawsuits themselves, so there may be a way to characterize them as legitimately distinct from a procedural standpoint. Usually, a single set of events gives an alleged victim the right to sue once, characterizing events in various ways under different legal theories. But the new suit gives the impression that Mylan's first suit was a false start; these aren't just different legal theories, but a whole different version of events. Now, it wants a do-over.
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