The LAT has an interesting story in today’s paper about a free speech case currently before the US Supreme Court:  Woman’s crusade against bar spawns free speech case.  The case is about whether prior restrain orders can be issued in defamation cases.  The basics have to do with the crusade of a Newport Beach woman against  bar next to a cottage she owns.

The basics:

Lemen owns a cottage only feet from the restaurant and led a campaign to restrict it because she said it disrupted the neighborhood. Aric Toll, 41, a chef who bought the restaurant and bar with his parents, filed a defamation lawsuit against Lemen, saying she was ruining his business.

After a trial, a judge ordered Lemen to stop videotaping Toll’s customers and barred her from telling anyone that the bar makes sex videos, dabbles in child pornography, distributes illegal drugs, encourages lesbian activities, has mafia links, is a whorehouse or sells tainted food — all false statements, the court said, that Lemen had made. She appealed the order before it could be enforced.

Courts around the country have disagreed over whether such “prior restraint” orders in defamation cases are constitutional, and cases involving them are multiplying as people sue to stop alleged defamation on the Internet. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld prior restraint in cases of national security and obscenity, but not in a defamation complaint. When it took up the question in a case brought by the late attorney Johnnie Cochran against a picket, the high court said only that the order against the picket was unconstitutionally broad.

Duke University constitutional law professor Erwin Chemerinsky is paying his own way to California and working free of charge to tell the California Supreme Court today that the order violates Lemen’s right to free speech.

If Lemen loses, such court orders might become “a regular remedy in defamation cases,” Chemerinsky said. Newspapers could even be barred from covering a person who won one, he said. In his view, the only appropriate remedy for defamation is monetary damages.

One needs to reads the entire piece to get a feel for the situation.  One gets the impression that Lemen is, well a tad eccentric, and one wonders why some of her behavior (like sitting in front of the establishment and laying on her car horn for half an hour straight) isn’t considered harassment or at least disturbing the peace.

Still, one also wonders why, if the Village Inn believes that their business has been damaged that they can’t put a monetary value on the damages.

I certainly would think that Lemen could be ordered to stop making videotapes and taking still pictures of the customers.  Indeed, it seems like there ought to be a legal remedy to her behavior outside of the issue of speech.  I am guessing the fact that she owns property adjacent to the Inn makes a restraining order a moot option.