According to a column by Clarence Page, Shirley Sherrod is suing MF Breitbart for a misleading video clip that the MF posted on one of his websites. As a result of the clip, Mrs. Sherrod was fired from her job at the Dept. of Agriculture. Some say the Ag Dept was too quick to fire Mrs. Sherrod; I say if that MF hadn't used that doctored clip the whole thing wouldn't have happened. It's pay back time.

This is a defamation lawsuit, not merely a "I lost my job" lawsuit.

       The lady was portrayed by the defendant as a blatant racist. The defamatory publication was picked up all over the net on national television. Brietbardt gave further interviews where he dug his hole deeper.

     Her reputation is shattered. How would you like it if Bill Oreilly read one of your posts and said it was racist on his show and ran your picture?

     So damages are easy here and in the million dollar range. What is harder is the question of malice for this media defendant.
     
      Can't remember if Breitbardt edited the clip himself to make it appear she was racist or if someone else gave it to him that way.

but at the time of the original publication I don't think anyone had heard of her.

She was offered her job back, so she is going to have a hard time with damages.  There is an obligation to lesses damages, so you can't say you were fired, refuse a job, and then say you want money because you weren't working.

In fact, she could do the low end lecture circuit and thus has the option of making more money than she did before.

Her damages are a few days worth of mental distress.  I would hate to be her attorney and take 30% of that sum in exchange for 2 years work on the case.

...it's very likely she does not qualify as having been a public figure when the smear was released.  People who are not public figures have a much easier time proving defamation or libel.

she isn't a public figure, but she still has to prove damages.  

A good law suit costs thousands of dollars, and libel cases rarely can be handled on contingency.  She would have to pay thousands of dollars of legal fees and she doesn't have ten cents hard damages.

A lot of times pain and suffering and other emotional damages are calculated on a multiplier of actual damages.  (This is not a hard rule, just a guide for the jury to consider, and it sounds reasonable.  E.G., you have 10,000 worth of medical bills and 10,000 of lost wages, asking for 60K - three times - sounds reasonable.
Shirley has not hard damages, so asking 100 times won't get enough to pay for parking at the court.

Does she want to spend $40,000 to get one dollar for the principle?

Take your ball and go home.

For two days, she was embarassed, and then she became the sympathetic victim.  It isn't as if she was tarnished for life.

by almighty allah, i hope that Sherrod takes that little guttersnipe nit-wit to the cleaners.

no doubt AB got some stuff he doesn;t want aired.  for example, his championing of the ACORN fraudsters  O'Keefe and Giles.

More than one side can sling mud, and who do you think the public, not the rightward-listing denizens of TER Politics, are going to identify with and sympathise with? A maifesting right-wing and totally irresponsible flack or some humble civil servant?

By allah, I loathe this moronic phrase, but I'll make a one-time exception : you go, girl!