Court Tosses Roy Moore Lawsuit Against Sacha Baron Cohen For Tortious Hilarity

First Amendment, how does it go?

(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The problem with appointing a bunch of 30- and 40-somethings to lifetime positions on the federal judiciary is that you wind up with a bunch of Gen X and elder millennials who don’t share the delicate sensibilities of the Federalist Society elders who selected them. Alabama judge Roy Moore ran smack into this generational barrier yesterday when his defamation suit against comedian Sacha Baron Cohen was booted out of court by a jurist who clearly watched the Borat movies and laughed his ass off.

Here’s how U.S. District Judge John P. Cronan described Baron Cohen’s show “Who Is America” in yesterday’s order granting the artist’s motion to dismiss:

The first episode featured a discussion with a U.S. Senator, during which a disguised Cohen offered his economic proposal of “hav[ing] 100% of the people” put “in the one percent” to address economic disparity and showed the Senator a document purportedly created by the “International Institute of Truth and Knowledge” as support for his proposal. That same episode also featured Cohen, in his “Erran Morad” character, promoting to several lobbyists and politicians his idea for “Kinderguardians”, a program that would entail arming children as young as three years old with firearms to defend against school shootings. On another episode of Who Is America?, Cohen, again as “Erran Morad”, interviewed a former Vice President of the United States. After discussions of prior international conflicts and enhanced interrogation, Cohen produced his “waterboarding kit” and asked the former Vice President to sign it. [Citations omitted.]

Let’s take a wildass guess that Hizzoner was aware of the defendant’s oeuvre before Roy Moore and his infamous attorney Larry Klayman (is that guy still barred???) shambled into the courtroom demanding $95,000,000 to make him whole after Baron Cohen, in character as IDF Gen. Erran Morad, waved a supposed pedophile detecting device at him as it beeped uncontrollably.

Sorry, Leonard Leo. If you wanted someone without a sense of humor, you probably shouldn’t have tapped a 44-year-old from Teaneck, New Jersey. Also, your party should probably have nominated a senate candidate who wasn’t credibly accused of sexual impropriety with multiple teenage girls.

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The case was garbage from the jump. Moore signed a waiver giving up his right to sue for emotional distress, defamation, and fraud — the very causes of action he asserted in the complaint. Moore’s wife Kayla, whom he met when she was 16 and he attended her dance recital, attempted an end run around the waiver with her own distress claim. But Judge Cronyn tossed her case, too, on First Amendment grounds.

“In light of the context of Judge Moore’s interview, the segment was clearly a joke and no reasonable viewer would have seen it otherwise,” Judge Cronan wrote. “The segment began with an absurd joke (i.e., “Gen. Erran Morad” boasting about once killing a suicide bomber with an iPad 4, but luckily he had purchased AppleCare), followed soon by footage of numerous news reporters commenting on the accusations brought against Judge Moore. At this point, it should have been abundantly clear to any reasonable viewer that Defendants were using humor to comment on those accusations, rather than making independent factual assertions or even remarking on the truth or accuracy of the allegations.”

Thus ends the three-year saga of Moore v. Cohen.

Or perhaps not …

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It appears that Klayman and Moore have already appealed to the Second Circuit. Although it took them a couple tries to get the paperwork right.

LOLOL.

Moore v. Cohen [Docket via Court Listener]


Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.