University of Idaho Prof Sues TikTok Psychic Over Murder Accusations
“Guillard’s videos have been viewed millions of times, amplifying Guillard’s online persona at the expense of Professor Scofield’s reputation”
A psychic on TikTok claimed that tarot cards revealed that the prof was responsible for the recent murders at the school. This is insane.
The College Fix reports:
TikTok psychic sued by University of Idaho professor for murder accusations
A University of Idaho history professor filed a federal defamation lawsuit against a TikTok psychic who claimed to have received information through tarot cards that the scholar was responsible for four murders.
Professor Rebecca Scofield filed the federal lawsuit on December 21 after multiple cease and desist letters were sent and ignored by Ashley Guillard.
Guillard (pictured) posts videos on social media website TikTok where she claims to solve murders using tarot cards and other psychic methods. Her videos have racked up millions of views, according to the lawsuit. She calls herself a “clairvoyant” and is “blessed with the ability to access and interpret information from the universal consciousness,” according to her website.
She accused Scofield of hiring someone to murder four students in November 2022 at the University of Idaho to cover up a romantic relationship with one of the victims.
Scofield has “never met any of the victims,” the federal lawsuit stated.
“Guillard’s videos have been viewed millions of times, amplifying Guillard’s online persona at the expense of Professor Scofield’s reputation,” the professor’s attorneys wrote. The TikToker accused Scofield of hiring Jack DuCoeur, the ex-boyfriend of one of the victims, to commit the murders. Police have already ruled out DuCoeur as a suspect, according to the New York Post.
The lawsuit stated further:
Two of the TikToks [posted around November 24] directly and falsely state that Professor Scofield ordered the execution of the four students. Three of the TikToks either falsely implied or directly stated that Professor Scofield had been involved in a relationship with
one of the murdered students.After that set of videos, “Guillard posted an additional five TikTok videos falsely alleging that Professor Scofield ordered and planned the murders of the four students,” according to the lawsuit. “In three of the videos Guillard falsely stated that Professor Scofield and a student at the University of Idaho… together planned the murders of the four students.”
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Comments
Hardly fresh ground: does your First Amendment freedom of religion allow you to shout “murderer” in a crowded chatroom?
Just for the sake of experiment, I want to shout “stage play!” in a crowded fire station.
Unfortunately I don’t think this suit can go anywhere. So long as the defendant was clear at all times about how she “knew” that the plaintiff is a murderer, this is not defamation.
“The cards told me she’s a murderer” is either a true fact, and thus not defamation, or else it’s a mere opinion and thus also not defamation.
No reasonable person, on reading the defendant’s words, would conclude that the plaintiff is a murderer. Quite the contrary, they would conclude that the defendant is a nutcase. Again, no defamation.
And yet, the country is full of unreasonable people.
Look at how many voted for Biden or believed in “Q.”
The law, however, only considers the “reasonable man”, aka “the man on the Clapham omnibus”. A. P. Herbert explored the question of whether there is also a “reasonable woman”.
Then it sits brain-dead NPCs on the juries whose makeup is “defined” to represent the “reasonable man.” You can’t have it both ways.