Courtesy of the Smoking Gun, I see that a judge in New Jersey has dismissed a defamation suit brought by several women featured in the satirical work Hot Chicks With Douchebags. The women — depicted in pictures, and thus accused of being some of the "hot chicks" at issue — complained that their reputation has been harmed and their emotions tormented by the authors' unauthorized use of their pictures. The earnest Superior Court judge of New Jersey — a locale that skeptics might say is a hub, even an epicenter, of the very douchebaggery depicted in the book — engages in a thoughtful First Amendment analysis, concluding that the book is clearly satirical and therefore not defamatory.

As always in such cases, the joy of the opinion is in seeing staid and stodgy legal analysis applied to something very unserious. Witness, for example, the judge's musings on what a reasonable person would or would not believe that Jean-Paul Sartre said, and whether a reasonable person would accept that Johns Hopkins has a Department of Scrotology.

Last 5 posts by Ken

• Anatomy Of A Scam Investigation, Chapter Ten - February 5th, 2012
• Marc Stephens Threatens Me Some More - February 3rd, 2012
• Now I Belong To The Ages - January 31st, 2012
• The Road to Popehat: The Oracle At Popehat Edition - January 27th, 2012
• Step Right Up For The Thursday Censorious Asshat Roundup - January 26th, 2012