Help! I've been sued!
As some of you already know, for the past year I have been dealing with a small claims lawsuit from right-wing journalist and affiliate of David Horowitz, Lee Kaplan. This has been over a simplistic blog I started last May criticizing his writings and his aggressive intimidation against students who mobilize in support of the Palestinian people.
Yesterday, I received notice that I lost my second hearing on this
matter and have been asked to pay Lee Kaplan $7,500 in damages plus $75 in court fees. I will never know why, or what element of the claim the judge bought, because there is no written opinion. As I understand it, I have no further legal recourse because of the serious limitations of small claims court. I really don’t know what to say, except that I am certain I have been dealt with unjustly and that I am still confident I have done nothing wrong. I still believe Kaplan’s case against me to be built on a pack of lies, and something akin to a questionable conspiracy coordinated by a handful of friends and political allies.
I want to keep this post brief, so the vast majority of what I have
to say about this unfortunate outcome is on a few statements I have posted publicly on the blog, Lee Kaplan Watch, and to which I have linked below. I would ask that if you want to forward or spread this news, to do so by whatever means you can: e-mail it to others, blog about it, or share it on FaceBook, MySpace, and similar websites. Publicity is crucial at this point to make sure people know exactly what is going on.
I have also set up a fundraiser to solicit donations that will go either towards fighting this result or paying off the judgment. I ask that anybody who is troubled by this story to please read what I have written about it at the links below, draw your own conclusions, and decide whether or not this is a cause worth donating to.
Thanks,
yaman
LINKS:
Kaplan v. Salahi and the failures of the justice system – My initial reaction to the judgment and a criticism of the shortcomings of small claims court
The faulty case against me – On the merits of Kaplan’s claim against me
The danger Kaplan v. Salahi poses to bloggers and activists everywhere – A shorter overview of the entire affair
Join the Conversation
When I read about the case I thought the judge is going to throw the case out the door considering how ridicules it was.
Whatever happened to freedom of speech and what your wrote on the blogs are factual. Didn’t this guy claim that it was Islam that drove that Korean guy to go on the rampage in that university?
You should try to fight this further if you can afford it. The evidence he presented won’t stand in a real court room. Screenshots can be edited so easily. Only way to proof is to present a live link with the content. Email stuff, the judge should have requested someone to track the email before ruling. This judge have no idea what the internet is. Sigh… I can nitpick through every evidence he presented because it only takes few minutes to confirm the legitimacy of the email he claimed you sent or what not.
You must have got a idiot of a judge or a racist judge. It happens, fun.
And did the judge actually track these emails and websites or did it just sit in front of the paper u and him gave about something that happened online and decide? Do you know know how the process went?
The mistake Yaman made is that he attacked the man personally, instead of defeating his ideas.
Not only does his opponent have cause to use all available tactics, but it does say something about the weakness of Yaman’s arguments if he felt compelled to take it to a personal level.
I have no sympathy for Yaman. He deserved to be sued.
Salahi is a crybaby. He l;ost the lawsuit because he was shown to ahve lied to the court on numerous occaisions. He had five hearings before three judges and his last appeal was in Superiror COurt where he had a free lawyer representing him. The evidence against him was so overwhelming
that the judge shook his head. Now he’s trying to rehash the case over the Internet with same type of lying that got him sued in the first pplace. No sympathy for this clown. Judging by what he is doing over the Internet he is begging to get wsued again and again…
I just found this on a google search. Enough said. Salahi has some nerve asking people to give him money to bail himself out of his own stupidity:
http://www.leekaplandeconstructsleekaplanwatch.blogspot.com
It sounds like the man who was sued had a perfect right to do so…
Yaman, ignore the idiocy above. Lee Kaplan is clearly an insecure nutcase and must be fought against. What’s wrong with this world, someone expresses an opinion and people sue for “libel”? Get over yourselves.
We’re with you 100% Yaman and don’t let comments like the ones above discourage you from a strong fight.
I went through the documents presented as “evidence”, the websites are all saved on to the Kaplan’s computer and then printed. No judge would take something like that as evidence if he/she knew about the implications behind that. For all we know Kaplan edited the text to match what he is saying and to complicate the matter, the layout is distorted on one of the screenshots. What kind of an idiot judge ruled based on shady evidence?
For the e-mail, without the full header of an email, no one an tell who sent the emails. The full headers weren’t presented as evidence, but the emails were so the email evidence should have been thrown out just like the website evidence.
Yaman, I think you had a really shitty lawyer.
Feel free to go though these things and confirm it.
And Truth/Kaplan, god damn it go away.
Yaman, did you contact the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) for help?
Truth is one of Lee Kaplan’s known aliases, and I am confident that if Esra’a sends me the IP address of the poster it will match Lee’s comments on my other websites. His egomania forces him to religiously track down every single web site on the internet that mentions his name.
Jina: Yes, you are right. I did not have a shitty lawyer. I had an excellent lawyer, a great guy and a very generous one too. He was very dedicated to this case and performed his research well. The problem was not my lawyer, but the way small claims court is set-up.
RandallJones: I do not believe that the ACLU is interested in this kind of case (civil lawsuit).
Salahi lost this case because he did the same thing he has done here: lied and the judges caught him at it. The evidecne in court was so damning that the judges shook their heads in both cases. Now he is trying to trump up some kind of freedom of speech abuse. Salahi made threats, and committed libel. He had legal represenation for free and even appeared before two Superior Court judges losing. I was in the gallery that day observing. Anyone foolish enough to help him pay his judgment should ahve his head examined.
All of these seem to be Kaplan aliases, Yaman. How else would it be possible for all of these people to appear at exactly the same time in this post, to know about it as soon as it has been published, and to have the exact same stance on it? Sorry, to me that is just weird… and pretty damned creepy!
Of course they’re Kaplan. The gallery had room for about 12 people… barely enough for those participating in the lawsuits. There were no “independent observers” in the gallery. That’s just ridiculous.
I don’t know why this reminds me of the Ted Rall vs Ann Coulter fiasco.
Haha Melissa, I love Ted Rall, and hate Ann Coulter, so this is the perfect comparison. Coulter seems to be just as anti-Arab/anti-Muslim.
This is Yaman Salahi:
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! BOO HOO!!!!! I have to be held responsible for what I write and do…sniffle..sniffle…sniffle…
Give us a break. He doesnt speak for the rest of us in the Arab or Muslim community and is an embarassment to us who strive for jsutice in the Middle East. We shouldnt rally behind morons like him.
Rest of us in the Arab and Muslim community? Your IP is based in neither, and judging from your comments here I highly doubt you’re either Arab or Muslim, unless you’re a self-hating one defending a racist like Kaplan.
I see that Yaman’s kaplanwatch ‘blogspot’ blog is no longer run by Yaman but has been taken over by Kaplan himself. How low and mean can you get?
Kaplan’s rabid quest to obliterate any opposition from US Citizens to Israel’s inhumane policies against the indigenous Palestinians is appalling. I really don’t know what motivates this right wing Bay Area nut-job.
The Israelis expelled the native Palestinians at gunpoint from their homes in 1948 and continue to abuse and ‘ethnically cleanse’ these people within their remaining UN-mandated territory. There is a chilling and tragic parallel to the early days of Nazi persecution of the Jews.
Yaman – well done and keep up the good work. I suggest you get the ACLU onto your case because it doesn’t seem like justice was done.