Small Claims Court Becomes SLAPP Slip

A SLAPP - strategic lawsuit against public participation - is a mechanism that many people use to stifle public criticism or debate by using the legal system as a weapon. When the critics have to spend too much time or money defending themselves, they can't afford to keep speaking their minds. Some states, like California, have statutes giving the defendant a way of challenging the motives of the suit. But companies and individuals keep trying to find ways of circumventing the statutes, and one of the latest attempts may involve California's small claims courts.

Berkeley sophomore Yaman Salahi started a blog called Lee Kaplan Watch, following the work of a journalist by that name. Kaplan ended up suing him for libel in small claims court - a fairly unusual move. And apparently he's been ordered by the court to pay $7,500 in damages. Under California law, small claims judges aren't required to file written opinions, so it's difficult for Salahi to find grounds to challenge the decision. Oh, and the same day the judgment came out, Kaplan applauded a writer's U.S. court victory in a libel case because a $120,000 UK judgment could have bankrupted her and effectively kept her from speaking her mind. Ah, the irony. And here's an article about Kaplan's relationship to the Arab-Israeli conflicts and pro-Palestinian voices in the U.S.:

The self-appointed watchdog of the Bay Area's pro-Palestinian groups, he has made it his mission in life to disrupt their events, confront their leaders, and reveal them to the world as he sees them. He uses tactics that others call extreme, and he calls necessary: He has infiltrated their conferences and gone in disguise to their training sessions, with tape recorder and hidden camera. When his foes are college students, he calls their deans. When they're Jewish, he contacts their families. Kaplan acknowledges that such tactics won't resolve any conflicts, here or abroad, but he doesn't believe that compromise is possible with the current pro-Palestinian groups.

If this representation is correct, then, in other words, free speech is fine - if it's "correct" free speech. Didn't Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia have similar approaches?

[Edited to explicitly acknowledge that I can't know if the article about Kaplan is correct in what it states.]