Sue Scheff vs Carey Bock Levine: 2009 Collection of $11M Judgment Starts! Free Speech will not Condone Defamation

After winning an unprecedented jury verdict for damages in 2006 ($11.3M), the defendant attempted to have her judgment set aside. It was strongly denied by the State Court Judge and she lost at the state level. Bock then appealed and again lost, this time at the appellate level!

Two courts have agreed Bock is guilty of Internet defamation. Bock had strong lawyers behind her, they withdrew from the case just months before trial. Why?

Rather than immediately seeking new legal representation Bock chose to leave the state and marry her new husband, Kenneth Bock. It is believed to be her 3rd or 4th husband.

Bock claims to have been a victim of Hurricane Katrina and managed to gain support as a result of her false claims. People all over the world watched Hurricane Katrina unfold and saw the devastation. So using this as a tactic seemed effective for Bock (or so she thought).

But, what she failed to tell the public, and eventually her supporters, was that she had sold her house a month prior to the hurricane (there are court documents to support this fact) and that she was living in a beautiful gated community far from the devastation of the hurricane.

She also fails to tell the public that she attended two depositions with her attorneys after Hurricane Katrina.

So for 2009 the collections process will begin.

It is time for justice. This case has set precedence: freedom of speech, taken too far, can have dire consequences offender – even when done on the Internet.

Just because it’s the Internet and it’s easy to click away late into the night, it doesn’t make it right. New laws are being written as a result of cases like this one.

Remember, we still have freedom of speech. None of us want to loose that right. But there is a line between freedom of speech and defamation and people who cross that line need to be held accountable – not just in “real life” but also in cyber space.