Can’t win the debate? Silence your opponent.

For the past couple of years, Ted Frank of Overlawyered.com and I have sparred over the issue of tort reform. At my own personal blog, go666.com, Ted and I engaged in several lengthy arguments. While I disagreed with many of his comments, I never censored him. In fact, I often moved his comments from comment threads to main posts, to better highlight our debates for readers. For the most part, our debates had been civil and productive, which caused me to respect Ted a great deal. My respect for him was so great that at one point we traded a series of very cordial emails in which I asked for and he offered me career advice. Again, while I disagree with most of Ted's position, I admire and respect him. I am sorry to say that Ted's actions at Tortdeform.com and at Overlawyered have diminished that respect.

It is a rare post at Tortdeform that Ted doesn't criticize in the comments thread, regardless of who authored the post. Over the past several months, his comments have grown more frequent, more critical, and more unprofessional. He's accused me and others on several occasions of illiteracy, he's called me "fundamentally dishonest" more than once, he's accused authors of dishonesty and hypocrisy merely for disagreeing with him, and whenever he's backed into a rhetorical corner or otherwise proven wrong, he equivocates and accuses others of game-playing or sophistry. One reader of the site even noted that, "he seems to have a special affinity for insulting Justinian Lane." If you read even one of the above links, you'll wonder how Ted can justify his statement that, "I have not attacked Mr. Lane."

Most recently, he attempted to misquote a Harvard study to back up one of his dubious arguments. When I corrected his mistake by quoting the author of the study, he accused me of "trolling." If you look at the right-hand column of Tortdeform.com under "Contributors" you will see several names, including mine. You will not see Ted Frank's name. Nor will you find Ted's name under "Guest Contributors." As such, Tortdeform.com is much more my site than his. Accusing me of trolling on my own site is tantamount to accusing me of trespassing in my own home. If anyone is a troll at Tortdeform, it is surely Ted. His constant and perpetual personal attacks on the various contributors to Tortdeform.com do nothing to further the debate over how to protect the civil justice system or how to properly compensate truly injured citizens. To the best of my knowledge, Ted's antics have never been censored at Tortdeform, no matter how rude he has been. And since I don't moderate the comments at corpreform (other than to delete Viagra spam and the like), I know for a fact Ted has never been censored at go666.com, nor will he ever be. I don't believe in winning an argument by silencing my opponent.

The powers-that-be at Overlawyered don't share that belief. On at least three, and possibly as many as five distinct occasions, someone at Overlawyered refused to approve my comments. Yesterday, I was responding to yet another post on Overlawyered in which Ted accused me of "a fundamental lack of reading comprehension" and in which he misrepresented one of my arguments. I tried to comment on his post to correct Ted's misrepresentation. At this time, my comment still hasn't been approved, even though eight other comments posted after mine have been approved. I can only assume my comment never will be approved. Again, this is at least the third time this has happened, so I assume it to be intentional. I'm not sure what role that Ted plays in approving comments to his posts, but I'm confident he is at least aware that I've attempted to comment on the posts in which he attacks me. (Ted, if you don't approve of this censorship, let me know either in a comment here, or via email and I will correct this post after my comments have been approved and posted at Overlawyered.) I want to be clear that the comments I attempted to post were not lewd, vulgar, or inappropriate. I can only surmise I've been censored for merely disagreeing with and correcting Ted.

I also want to be clear about something else. It is very rare that I attempt to comment on a post at Overlawyered. The posts I do attempt to comment on are usually those in which I'm mentioned by name or in which an Overlawyered author is discussing a post from Tortdeform.com or go666.com. There are two reasons why I comment so sparingly. First, I've found that most authors don't like criticism and Ted seems to despise it. I welcome it. Only by engaging my opponents in free anddebate do I have the opportunity to strengthen my arguments and learn the weaknesses in theirs. Second, I've found Overlawyered to be little more than an echo chamber where anti-consumer propagandists mindlessly bash the civil justice system. My goal has been and always will be to ensure the civil justice system is fair to everyone. I believe Ted's goal is to ensure the civil justice system is only fair to such generous funders of the tort reform movement and to his employer as Philip Morris and Enron. As such, I don't think posting comments there is a productive use of my time.

I'm confident that I'll be attacked again at Overlawyered.com, if not for this post, then for a future post or comment at Tortdeform.com in which I will correct another of Ted's misrepresentations. I would hope for the opportunity to defend myself in the comment thread on Overlawyered.com, but I will not be surprised if I am once more denied that opportunity. Then again, that my attackers are too afraid to publish my response to their personal attacks against me discredits them in a way my words never could.

Comments

[Ted]

Your comment on Overlawyered was a troll, and I don't approving trolling comments on the Overlawyered comment logs. If you want to post something substantive, you're welcome to do so. If you want to lie and say that "Frank thinks taxes are for other people to pay" was not an insult, sorry, Overlawyered isn't for you to play Argument Clinic. That's hardly "silencing" you when you have two different blogs to spread all the lies you want.

You are accused of being dishonest because you regularly engage in fundamentally dishonest tactics. For example, in this fundamentally dishonest post, you misquote me: the full quote was, "I have not attacked Mr. Lane; I've criticized the disregard for the facts and the law shown in his writing and the unwillingness of Mr. Lane to address real issues and his insistence on changing the subject whenever one tries to engage what he writes."

I did not accuse you of trolling for citing the Harvard study; I noted that you were trolling because you had lied about what the Harvard study said.

Can't win the debate? Do what Justinian Lane does, and lie.

[Ted]

Note also Lane's lie that I've accused people of dishonesty or hypocrisy for "disagreeing."

[Justinian Lane]

Ted, the "trolling comment" I posted on Overlawyered was substantive. I asked you specifically whether you agree that Stephen Roberts should refuse to accept a settlement larger than he thinks should be legal. I'll ask again, do you? If not, why not?

As for the taxes comment? I apologize if you're offended that I believe you support tax policies that benefit you at the expense of lower-earners. But let's talk about your latest post here in which you accuse me of misquoting you. That I left off the remnant of your quote doesn't change the statement preceding the semicolon. You state that you "have not attacked" me. You have in fact on multiple occasions accused me of illiteracy. That is an attack, and thus your statement is false. If you want to question or attack my arguments, I invite you to freely do so. But really, accusing me of not knowing how to read just makes you look foolish. If I was REALLY illiterate, would you spend so much time arguing with me? If you really want to continue with ad hominem attacks, I'm ok with that. But just to keep it interesting, could you at least mix it up a little and not just use the same two insults about my reading ability? You know, maybe call me an "arrogant ass" in one post, and perhaps even drag out a golden-oldie like "nincompoop" or "chucklehead."

Please explain to me how quoting the author of the study word for word is lying.

[Justinian Lane]

With respect to Ted's 1:28 comment: Follow the links I posted and judge for yourself if I'm lying.

Note also the fact that I'm confident enough in what I say to allow Ted (and anyone) to post without restriction on my site, while Ted freely admits to censoring those individuals he deems to be trolls. I've noticed from time to time other people at Overlawyered have made personal attacks against me and other Tortdeform authors in your comment thread. Why don't you censor them? Aren't they trolls? Or as I speculated earlier, do you prefer Overlawyered to stay an echo chamber for anti-consumer propagandists to mindlessly bash the civil justice system and those who fight to preserve it?

[Ted]

Peter Nordberg and I disagree just about everything when it comes to reform-related issues. He has never had a comment rejected. Why? Because he doesn't troll.

Dozens of other plaintiffs' lawyers have posted comments on Overlawyered.

David Behar, who calls lawyers corrupt "land pirates," has been banned as a troll. You've had comments rejected as trolls when you say things that are both off-topic and plainly untrue in an attempt to hijack the discussion onto a collateral topic. If you want to make a substantive comment, you've been permitted to do so, even when it later turns out that you were just dishonestly trolling, such as http://www.overlawyered.com/2006/12/deep_pockets_file_19yearold_di.html

[Matt]

Ted,

At Overlawyered, you're the only one who is allowed to troll. You routinely have posts that are unrelated to the supposed point of the site "chronicling the injustices of our legal system", yet you deny any commenter who you deem is "off-topic" or "trolling". You attack the funding sources behind your opponents, but let your own or those who agree with you be attacked, and they are trolls.

Be honest, at least with yourself.

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