GENNIFER FLOWERS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. JAMES CARVILLE; HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON; LITTLE, BROWN & CO.; GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, Defendants-Appellees., 310 F.3d 1118

Summary

Plaintiff claimed to have had an affair with former President Clinton. Plaintiff alleged that defendants defamed her and painted her in a false light by claiming that she had lied in her story to a tabloid and "doctored" the tape-recorded phone calls. Plaintiff further alleged that defendant former first lady masterminded the conspiracy and not only orchestrated the defamatory exploits, but also exposed private information about plaintiff and organized break-ins of her residence. Plaintiff claimed that her reputation had wilted and her blossoming career as a Las Vegas lounge singer was nipped in the bud. The court of appeals found that plaintiff's defamation claims were not time-barred because she held her cause of action from the time it accrued, and she was a citizen of Nevada when she filed her complaint. The trio of colorful waste metaphors--the references to the tabloid stories as "trash," "crap" and "garbage"--were not defamatory under Nevada law. Defendants' accusations of ...