McVea v. Crisp [1]

Denise McVea, a journalist and author, sued Alamo historian James Crisp in Texas federal court for defamation, false light, and intentional infliction of emotional distress after Crisp criticized McVea's research and book about in forum posts on a prominent Alamo history website, www.thealamofilm.com. 

According to plaintiff's complaint [2], Crisp made the following allegedly defamatory statements:

• "when confronted by logical contraditions in her argument, Plaintiff simply denies them."
• "I was willing to give her research the benefit of the dbout, but ultimately unwilling to lend my support to a work which stretched both the evidence and credulity, as her book clearly does."
• "On the other hand, Dunn, after years of archival research carried out in his spare time, has now brought forth a succinct article which, using passport applications, census data, newspaper accounts, and ships' passenger lists, makes a rock-solid case that Denise's provocative and interesting theory is wrong -- just flat wrong."
• "McVea, I have discovered -- in large part thanks to this forum -- is at her nastiest when her arguments are at their weakest -- and she is plenty nasty just now."
• "The documents which Dunn has used -- documents either ignored, not found, or suppressed by Denise McVea -- are in the public domain, and available for anyone to check."
• "Please read very carefully any 'rebuttal' submitted by Ms. McVea, and check her references with equal care.  That's what I did when I found that her arguments in previous submissions -- arguments based on prodigious and ingenious archival research -- nevertheless simply did not match the documentary evidence." 

Crisp moved to dismiss [3] McVea's claims due to the court's lack of personal jurisdiction over Crisp and McVea's failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted.  The court ruled [4] that Crisp was subject to Texas's personal jurisdiction, because Crisp's "comments . . . aimed at a Texas resident and directed to a predominately Texas audience on a website devoted to Texas history" established sufficient contacts with the state.

But the court granted [4] Crisp's motion to dismiss due to failure to state a claim.  The court ruled that given the context of the online forum and the nature of the discussion, the disputed comments could not be reasonably found to have a defamatory meaning, but rather were protected expressions of opinion.

McVea appealed the court's ruling.  On Aug. 27, 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit dismissed the appeal as frivolous.  The court held that "a person of ordinary intelligence would not find Crisp's words reasonably capable of defamatory meaning."