I may have sunk to a new low here, because I am about to link you to an article on TMZ. Not exactly a scholarly publication, but TMZ does give us a helpful update on the lawsuit brought by James Franco’s NYU professor against the actor. You will recall that James Franco said mean things about the professor after the professor gave him a bad grade.
The professor sued for the tort of defamation, but Franco never responded to the lawsuit in court. Thus, the professor has made a motion for default judgment. We learned in Chapter 3 that a plaintiff can ask for default judgment, meaning a judgment by the court that the plaintiff wins, if the defendant fails to respond to the complaint on time. Franco has decided to wake up, and actually defend himself in court. He is arguing he wasn’t properly served with the complaint, and that his statement was protected by the 1st Amendment because it was his opinion. As we know, if Franco’s statement was opinion, Franco is correct.
Of course, the best part of the entire update is the photo of Franco sleeping in class. I would have failed him too.
3 Comments
Nicole Pellegrino posted on March 4, 2013 at 9:54 am
Ha. He deserved the F. Just because he is a celebrity doesn’t mean he gets to sleep through class and still get an A.
This is tricky, because if what he said was opinion based he can’t be sued but at the same time what he said cost the professor his job. I wonder what will happen.
And yeah right. I’m sure he received the complaint and just didn’t respond until he realized it would cost him the lawsuit.
Andie Firestone posted on March 4, 2013 at 3:41 pm
I agree. Just because James Franco is a popular and well-established celebrity, does not give him the right to pass every class he takes. He decided to take these classes towards a certain degree, so he should have put in the effort to do well, instead of publicly bashing his professor. Because it was Franco’s opinion, it was accurate that he was not charged with defamation. Many students have bad opinions of certain professors, and even though it’s an opinion, it is not necessarily nice or right to publicly display this hatred. He could have gone about this situation in a more mature and ethical way, and I think it was wrong of him to assume such authority just because he is famous.
Greg McKetchnie posted on March 10, 2013 at 1:12 pm
I’m not going to argue that Franco did not deserve the D, and may have in fact deserved an F, but I do not think that this is relevant to the case. Saying a teacher is awful is an opinion- to be defamation, it would have to be an intentionally false statement, capable of being proven wrong. Imagine how many students would suddenly be liable for libel suits based off of comments on ratemyprofessor.com if Santana were to win this case. What seems to be often not even reported in this case is that Franco does not even allege that he did not deserve the D, in fact he said that he knew he would receive this grade but he thought that working on the movie 127 Hours was a better use of his time, in part because his teacher was bad. This was not Franco seeking revenge for a grade which he felt he did not deserve. As for the motion for default judgment, the suit was served to an address in California at which Franco does not even live, and after Franco’s lawyers learned of the lawsuit, they contacted Santana’s attorneys and told them they had never been served. Given these circumstances, I do not see how the motion could be granted, in fact they point more towards the suit being thrown out.