Trout Point Lodge v. Handshoe
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
729 F.3d 481 (5th Cir. 2014)
Trout Point Lodge (plaintiff) obtained a Nova Scotia default defamation judgment against Mississippi blogger Handshoe (defendant) for offensive blog posts, but Nova Scotia law does not require a defamation plaintiff to prove falsity (unlike Mississippi law), and Trout Point's complaint never specified with particularity how the blog entries were false; Handshoe removed Trout Point's enforcement action to federal court and obtained summary judgment.
Whether a party may enforce a foreign defamation judgment in a domestic court if: (1) the law of the foreign forum does not provide free speech protection that is coextensive with relevant domestic law, and (2) the facts are not sufficient to establish a defamation claim under domestic law.