S & S filed an aggressive response to a class action complaint from lawyer David Schoen, who has temporarily backed away from his attack on Jimmy Carter’s controversial 2006 tome, “Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid.’’ In his plaintiffs’ lawsuit, Schoen said Carter’s book was “an anti-Israeli screed’’ characterized “by falsehoods, misrepresentations, misleading statements, omissions of material facts and outright lies.’’
More recently, two plaintiffs in Montana sued local resident Greg Mortenson and Penguin, which published the gajillion-selling “Three Cups of Tea,’’ a heartwarming tale about all the nice things that happen to strangers in the wilds of Central Asia. The sequel, “Stones Into Schools,’’ sold pretty well, too.
The Montana suit alleges that the author and publisher “have repeatedly fabricated material details in the books ‘Three Cups of Tea’ and ‘Stones into Schools.’ The purpose of these fabrications was to induce unsuspecting individuals to purchase these books and feel good about Mortenson, thinking he was such a humanitarian for the sole benefit of children. These fabrications have generated significant sums of money for Mortenson …; and Penguin in the form of book sales.’’
Neither Mortenson nor Penguin has replied to the suit, and the publisher ignored my request for comment.
What’s going on? “This is part of the evolution of the class action lawsuit,’’ explains Walter Olson, founder of the website Overlawyered.com. “For a long time the courts only listened if you could prove the defendant liable, and that everyone had suffered. Now there have been several waves of rulemaking that have liberalized the standards.’’
