BuzzFeed, the popular independent digital media company, was hit with an $11 million defamation suit in January 2016 by journalist Michael Leidig and Central European News (“CEN”).
Leidig and CEN are demanding more than $11 million in damages over an August 24, 2015 BuzzFeed article titled “The King of Bullsh*t News” and subtitled “How a small British news agency and its founder fill your Facebook feed with stories that are wonderful, wacky — and often wrong.” Each plaintiff is seeking $5 million, in addition to $1.04 million for lost business opportunities, and punitive damages. The suit was filed in the Southern District of New York under the caption, Leidig et al. v. Buzzfeed, Inc., 1:16-cv-00642.
The article examined several stories published by CEN, fueled by BuzzFeed’s suspicions of “[t]he weird, wonderful, and exotic stories CEN has made a name for itself with,” the article stated. “In all, we evaluated 41 CEN pieces that struck us as particularly attention-grabbing. Of those, 11 proved to be completely false or to be based on images that did not match the stories; eight more contained suspicious details such as perfect quotes that appeared in no other coverage; 13 we were unable to verify either way; and nine appeared to be real or mostly real,” the article claimed.
Last Thursday, BuzzFeed responded to plaintiffs’ motion for partial summary judgment. In opposing the motion, BuzzFeed argued that the British news agency failed to show that its stories were true. In order to prevail on its defamation suit, CEN bears the burden of proving that Buzzfeed’s article is materially false. BuzzFeed urged the court to reject CEN’s pre-discovery motions for summary judgment arguing in its motion, “Plaintiffs fail to cite a single libel case in which summary judgment was entered against the defendant before discovery was conducted — and BuzzFeed is unaware of the existence of such a case.” In its papers, BuzzFeed instead pressed the court to grant summary judgment in its favor and dismiss the case, stating that the plaintiffs’ failure to prove falsity of BuzzFeed’s article is fatal to its claims. Oral argument on plaintiffs’ motion is set for March 2, 2017.
Additionally, on the same day, BuzzFeed moved to compel CEN to produce more evidence through discovery, claiming that the British news source has avoided its discovery obligations, only producing 400 documents in the case so far. CEN is alleging that BuzzFeed damaged its business, claiming that the article caused declining ad revenue and the loss of CEN clients, including “a potential high-six-figure investment.”
