Trevor Reid ||Law, Tech and Business Blog

I remain interested in the evolving role of Wikipedia, a collaborative online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, in litigation. This post discusses the recent example of Neuwirth v. Silverstein, No. B205521, 2009 WL 294737 (Cal. App. 2 Dist. Feb 9, 2009). Note that this is an unpublished opinion. In California the precedential value of unpublished opinions is limited by Ca. Rules of Ct., rule 8.1115.

In this case Wikipedia came up as part of the defendant’s argument that a particular epithet, “kahanist swine”, did not fulfill the definition of libel per se. Usually a plaintiff must establish that she was actually harmed by false statements to prevail in a defamation lawsuit. However, some lies are considered to be so ugly that severe harm to the plaintiff’s reputation is presumed. These are known as libel per se or slander per se. For example, slander per se includes falsely remarking that a woman is unchaste. Other lies that qualify for defamation per se include putting it about that someone has a horrid disease or has committed a serious crime.

The plaintiff alleged that the defendant had called her a “kahanist swine” on his web site. An organization called Kahane Chai is designated a foreign terrorist group on a roster kept by by the U.S. Department of State. The plaintiff argued this label amounted to falsely claiming  that she was involved in the heinous crime of terrorism and therefore entitled to a finding of libel per se. The defendant acknowledged using the term, but argued the meaning of the word kahanist was broader and less pejorative than in the plaintiff’s theory. He offered this from Wikipedia in support, which the court quoted in its opinion:

Kahanism is a term used in Israeli political parlance to refer, first of all, to the ideology of Rabbi Meir Kahane, and, more generally, to other right-wing Religious Zionist movements or groups that share a belief in the fundamental tenets of that ideology, chief among them being the idea that the State of Israel should be governed theocratically, should accord full citizenship only to Jews, and that all gentiles should either be deported or allowed to remain as resident aliens with full economic and personal rights, but no political rights. [¶] The central claim of Kahanism is that all Arabs are, and will continue to be, enemies of the Jews, and that a Jewish fundamentalist state, absent … a voting Arab population and that includes Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip and also possibly areas of modern Jordan and Lebanon, should be created. The Kahanist movement proper also argues that such a state should be ruled according to Jewish theocratic law known as Halakha, but the term “Kahanist” is sometimes used loosely to describe any Zionist group which seeks a greater Israel.

The principal Wikipedia article on Kahanism has been tagged as needing additional citations for verification since March of 2007. The passage quoted above does not appear in the present version, but probably can be found in an earlier revision.  Encyclo, another online encyclopedia, does cite Wikipedia as the source of the above definition verbatim. An identical or nearly so description appears on a handful of web sites located by searching for the first sentence via Google. This highlights the importance of citing to a specific version of any Wikipedia article used in important matters such as litigation. There is a ‘permanent link’ in the toolbox menu of every Wikipedia article which makes this easy to do.