(Credit: Devon Yu/Adobe Stock) W.Va. High Court Dismisses Former Democratic Senator's Defamation Claim Over Republican's Use of Facebook Video Soundbites in Ad
West Virginia's highest court has tossed out defamation and related claims lodged by a former Democratic state senator against a Republican senator who ran an ad featuring parts of the Democrat's Facebook video in which he criticized law enforcement authorities and said to a prosecutor, "I wish cancer upon you!"
May 03, 2023 at 01:02 PM
6 minute read
West Virginia's highest court has tossed out defamation and related claims lodged by a former Democratic state senator against a Republican senator who ran an ad featuring parts of the Democrat's Facebook video in which he criticized law enforcement authorities and said to a prosecutor, "I wish cancer upon you!"
While running in 2020 for state Senate, Rupert Phillips, a Republican, used soundbites from a 23-minute video former Sen. Richard Ojeda posted in September 2020 in which Ojeda "expressed his disappointment with the manner in which Logan County[, West Virginia,] authorities handled the criminal case against a man who physically assaulted him in 2016," according to the opinion from the majority of justices of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.
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