All I can say folks is Fred Heebe is throwing some serious money down this rabbit hole filing suit against Times Picayune commenter Henry L. Mencken. Gorden Russell has the breaking news for the Times Picayune and they included a link to the 151 page suit Heebe lawyer Kyle Shonekas filed in NOLA Civil District Court which mostly focuses on specualtion as to the identity of Henry L Mencken being assistant US Attorney Sal Perricone. The alleged defamatory comments are on pdf pages 3 and 4 of the suit and to my untrained eye look pretty weak. The T-P has 598 of the 601 total comments left to various stories by Mencken on his T-P profile page linked above and there is copy of all his remarks circa December 2011 in Heebe’s suit.
From a bigger picture standpoint this really signals a new level of nasty between Team Heebe and Team Letten. The speculation as to Mencken’s identity is enticing but it is also not the legal question. Its inclusion in the complaint tells me this is way more than a simple prelude to a US style defamation suit.
File this one under chilling effects from the mean streets of blogging.
sop