What do oaths have to do with it? Perjury charges are rare, and wouldn't be laid even if the proof were there in a civil case like this.

The best part is the lawyers will just ask him questions that he will be compelled to answer. The more answers he gives the more lies he will tell.

You frame the questions in such a way that, when he lies, you get to start bring in all of his misdeeds to impeach his testimony.

Geoge:

Please oh please oh please, go for it.

but I'd love to see NBC fight this to the end...

To defend against a defamation suit, the first step is to prove the plaintiff didn't have much of a reputation to begin with and NBC has the legal muscle to bring out *everything* in Zim's life, even the stuff we don't know yet...

I agree that I am not a big fan of Corporations, but I could live with the beathing GZ to a pulp in court. His over inflated sense of self worth will work to his disadvantage.

a wrongful death suit. Carry on, Zimmerman and O'Mara, carry on.

He has no idea about really deep pockets.

They apologized and fired the reporters. The only thing left is the settlement. There is no way NBC lets this go to a jury.

But whether or not it goes to settlement may depend on it going to court and the result of an NBC motion saying essentially 'yes it happened, but we took appropriate action when it happened, zimmerman needs to sue the reporter, not us"

I'd expect such a motion, if it were denied I think NBC makes a settlement offer, if its granted they'd no longer be a defendant in the suit.

Legally an employer is responsible for the actions of their employees. They were not doing something 'off the clock'. If a truck driver hits you, his employer is going to pay you not him.

but I am not entirely certain of the law with regards to how an employer taking action against the employee committing the act may mitigate the responsibility of the employer, and as to whether or not NBC had stated policy and such against doing what was done that may also mitigate. I really don't know in that respect, my point was that it may not be as simple as 'straight to settlement'.

But the reason NBC will pay rather than going to trial is that a trial will bring out how 'news' is really produced. A media giant like NBC does not want the public to see that. The old line about 'you don't want to see how sausages or legislation is made' applies to the news divisions of the corporate media giants.

I can see why they wouldn't want all that drug up.

I just think that if they can get it to a motion to dismiss or the like, they'll do that - it'll only be after a denial of such a motion that they'll settle.

Although, hmm, getting it to a motion to dismiss may well require enough discovery that they'd want to avoid it.

I don't think we're substantially disagreeing.

"NBC and Zimmerman settle out of court. Amount undisclosed. NBC admits no further wrongdoing" etc

They'll just pay him to make him go away. If it goes to trial, Z's lawyers will have a feeding frenzy asking employees if they are biased in news coverage, uncovering embarrassing statements under oath. They'll avoid an embarrassing trial about their own credibility at all costs

Play the unedited call that Z made to the police.

Then play NBC's edited version.

He won't have to take the stand and answer any questions about the events of that evening.

PEDICTION: NBC will offer a large out-of-court settlement, but they will want a secrecy agreement as to the amount of the settlement.

His suit is about NBC cutting up the call audio to make it look like he said 'he looks black' out of the blue, when it was actually a response to the dispatcher asking.

In a civil trial it may well be the case that any questions they ask Zimmerman be limited in scope to issues relevant to that.

Which likely means that they'd get to ask him about his views on race and evidence of his views in race - but the shooting itself could well be out of scope.

("Anything" in the post title is too strong a term, because I'm sure people would want him to testify on that. The point is he probably won't have to testify about the actual fight and shooting)

I hope they squash O'Mara

I'm sure the prospect of having to continue lying doesn't even register as an issue for him.

Forget his guilt or disposition, NBC did some fox-like editing which does no one any good.

He's due about 100 years of bad luck breaks about now...