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Friday, May 30, 2008
Ind. Decisions - "Channel 8 didn't defame pharmacy firm, judge rules"
Kevin O'Neal reports in the Indianapolis Star today:
A federal judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit against WISH (Channel 8) on Thursday.Here is a copy of federal Judge MCKinney's 17-page opinion. [Note: Fixed now!]The judge ruled that the station's report on a Canadian pharmacy benefit company that sells drugs to Americans was covered by Indiana's Anti-SLAPP Act, which protects reporters against lawsuits as long as the reporting is done in what the law says was "good faith."
WISH asked U.S. District Judge Larry McKinney to dismiss the suit in late February. The suit was filed by CanaRx Services, a Canadian company that sells prescription drugs by phone and online.
The suit was a response to a November 2007 series of reports on Internet prescriptions titled "Bad Medicine" by reporter Karen Hensel. According to the court ruling, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had been investigating CanaRx since 2003 and had criticized the Canadian company for making illegal drug imports to the U.S.
The WISH report referred to the FDA's criticism of CanaRx. The Canadian company said that reference, along with quotes from the FDA saying 80 percent of prescriptions ordered from the Internet were counterfeit, defamed it.
McKinney rejected CanaRx's arguments in his Thursday decision granting WISH's motion to dismiss the case.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 30, 2008 08:04 AM
Posted to Ind Fed D.Ct. Decisions