On Sat, 07 Jul 2007 16:38:08 +1200, bob >
rummaged among random neurons and opined:

>On Sat, 07 Jul 2007 16:25:33 +1200, bob >
>magnanimously proffered:
>
>>http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/s...0449681&pnum=0
>>
>>Restaurants Story
>>
>>Reviewers criticise at their legal peril
>>5:00AM Thursday July 05, 2007
>>By David Usborne
>>
>>Everybody wants to be a critic, but be warned. Praise what you see -
>>or taste - and the creator will love you forever. Slam it, however,
>>and they might just try to bite back.
>
>Seems like an epidemic:
>
>http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/...104023,00.html
>
>Critics up in arms as restaurant review judged defamatory

<snip>

I am totally not getting how a restaurant can sue a restaurant critic.
They might not think the review fair or unbiased, but it is an
*opinion* that is, assumedly, given by someone with some expertise in
the field:

"A critic (derived from the ancient Greek word krites meaning a judge)
is a person who offers a value judgment or an interpretation. (The
word is sometimes used pejoratively, especially by defenders of a
critic's object.) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critic"

Seems to me that a "value judgment or an interpretation" is on its
face subjective. The burden is on the plaintiff to prove libel and
I'd love to hear what the judge's findings of facts and conclusions of
law were - or its Ozzer equivilant.

I was, however, happy to see that the restaurant that got sued in the
above post was in Australia and not the notoriously litigation-happy
US.

Terry "Squeaks" Pulliam Burd...the litigation paralegal <blush>

--
"If the soup had been as hot as the claret, if the claret had been as
old as the bird, and if the bird's breasts had been as full as the
waitress's, it would have been a very good dinner."

-- Duncan Hines

To reply, replace "spaminator" with "cox"