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Free Speech

Libel by "Buddy Comedy"

Eugene Volokh | 6.18.2026 8:01 AM

From yesterday's Complaint in Spatz v. Stewart & TheaterMania (S.D.N.Y.):

This is an action for libel per se, and false statements causing special damages. Defendant Zachary Stewart, a theater critic writing for Defendant TheaterMania, authored and published a review of a theatrical production written and presented by Plaintiff. The production was a serious, historically grounded drama confronting the Holocaust, the founding of the State of Israel, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the tragedy of a miscarriage, and the racially motivated execution of a Black man for loving a white woman. Yet it was deliberately, falsely, and maliciously described that production as a "buddy comedy." …

Plaintiff believes and........

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