Claim That Accuracy in Media Misidentified the Person Holding Allegedly Pro-Hamas-Violence Sign at Columbia Protest …

An excerpt from the June 29 Georgia Court of Appeals decision in Accuracy in Media, Inc. v. Giusti, written by Judge Brian Rickman and joined by Chief Judge Trenton Brown and Judge Amanda Mercier:

Isabella Giusti (“Izzy”), Joni Saxon-Giusti, and Peter Giusti (collectively, “the Giustis”) filed a lawsuit against Accuracy in Media, Inc., and its president Adam Guillette (collectively, “Accuracy in Media”) asserting claims for defamation [and other torts]….

Here’s a summary of plaintiffs’ allegations:

Izzy, a native of Savannah, was a junior at Barnard College during the 2023-24 school year. Joni Saxon-Giusti and Peter Giusti are Izzy’s parents. On April 18, 2024, Izzy joined a protest regarding the war in Gaza on Columbia University’s main quad. During this protest, Izzy was arrested as part of a mass arrest of approximately 100 students. After Izzy was arrested, the New York Post ran an article identifying Izzy as one of the protesters who had been arrested.

On April 21, 2024, a masked person holding a sign that read “AL-QASAM’S NEXT TARGETS” was photographed in front of multiple pro-Israel counter-protestors near Columbia’s main quad. According to the Giustis’ verified complaint, the Al-Qassam Brigades are the military wing of Hamas, and, under the circumstances, the sign was rightly understood by those who saw it to be offensive and unacceptable and to imply that the counter-protestors should or would be subject to violence.

Izzy was not the masked person in the photograph holding the sign and was not at the protest when the photograph was taken. Nevertheless, several organizations opposed to the student protest at Columbia falsely claimed that Izzy was the person holding the sign.

By April 22, 2024, Accuracy in Media knew that “there[ were] questions as to if the picture [was] actually” Izzy. On May 1, 2024, Accuracy in Media purchased a website, www.izzygiusti.com. The website incorrectly identified Izzy as the person holding the sign in the photograph. On May 3, 2024, Guillette traveled to Savannah with a mobile billboard truck displaying Izzy’s name and photograph and the web address “IzzyGiusti.com.”

According to Guillette, the purpose of his trip to Savannah was to interview Izzy’s parents and conduct sidewalk interviews regarding Izzy. According to the Giustis, the purpose of the trip was to harass Izzy’s family in the family’s hometown. The mobile billboard truck and Guillette went near Joni Saxon-Giusti’s bookstore and targeted Peter Giusti at the family home, “mocking political signs in the home’s window, mocked Izzy’s family for avoiding an interview, and wondering in a subsequent write-up how the family was responsible for raising a ‘raging antisemite[.]‘” Accuracy in Media subsequently revised the website, cropping the photograph of the person holding the sign so that the text of the sign was no longer visible, and displaying the photograph next to a photograph of Izzy, with both photographs under the heading “Columbia’s Leading Antisemite Isabella Giusti.” …

And the legal analysis:

Accuracy in Media argues that the core of its publications was true—that Izzy was arrested at an extremist anti-Israel encampment at Columbia University, an event that Accuracy in Media believed to be antisemitic. Accuracy in Media further argues that labeling someone an “antisemite” is an example of rhetorical hyperbole or opinion.

However, the Giustis’ defamation claims originate from the misidentification of Izzy as the person holding the sign at the April 21 protest. Specifically, the Giustis alleged that Accuracy in Media defamed Izzy by causing “a website to be published that falsely accused Plaintiff of being the person holding the offensive sign, and [Accuracy in Media] caused a mobile billboard truck to be driven through Savannah bearing similar messages.”

The Giustis also alleged that Accuracy in Media defamed Joni Saxon-Giusti and Peter Giusti by publishing statements falsely “indicating that their parenting had caused Izzy to be the person holding the offensive sign and otherwise caused her to be a ‘raging antisemite,’ when in fact the underlying assumption for that statement was wholly inaccurate.” At this stage of the proceeding [the defendants' anti-SLAPP motion to strike the Giustis' complaint], we must accept the Giustis’ evidence as true.

Furthermore, “there is no wholesale defamation exception for anything that might be labeled opinion. An opinion can constitute actionable defamation if the opinion can reasonably be interpreted, according to the context of the entire writing in which the opinion appears, to state or to imply defamatory facts about the plaintiff that are capable of being proved false.” Here, at least some of the statements that the Giustis allege were published by Accuracy in Media may be reasonably understood to state or imply defamatory facts about the Giustis that could be proven false….

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