Earlier this month, a supposed faith healer hit the ceiling after finding out a video blogger had called him a faker and a fraud on YouTube. His response? He filed a comically ridiculous lawsuit against her. Well, this guy appears to have realized that he was asking for trouble, because–at least for now–he has dropped the lawsuit.
In December, Stephanie Guttormson, the operations director for the Richard Dawkins Foundation, took to YouTube to call out Adam Miller, a man who claims to have had the power to heal others since a near-death experience in 1977. Watch here. Guttormson contended that Miller’s claims to have healed 16,000 people in over three decades don’t withstand serious analysis. For instance, he claims to use the power of the Holy Spirit to break the “dark cellular structure” that causes disease. Guttormson calls this for the pseudoscience that it is.
Guttormson’s commentary was interspersed with portions from one of Miller’s promotional videos. When Miller saw this, he responded with an announcement that he intended to file a lawsuit against Guttormson for copyright infringement and defamation. Watch a mirror of Miller’s announcement here.
Miller told his followers that he wasn’t about to sit idly by and allow Miller to attack what he called “a very holy work.” He also suggested that Guttormson couldn’t be trusted because she works with an organization that “pretty much trashes anybody… having to do with either spiritualism or helping other individuals.” Later, he brought on several of his clients to suggest that Guttormson couldn’t be trusted because she is a trans woman.
This sounds a lot like the attacks James Randi faced when he called out a number of faith healers in his book, “The Faith Healers.”? Peter Popoff, for instance, managed to get back on the air after he was caught red-handed passing off information being fed to him from his wife via an earpiece as “words of knowledge.” Popoff, like Randi’s other targets, said Randi couldn’t be trusted just because he’s a fire-eating atheist. If that’s the best these people can do, it tells you all you need to know about them.
Techdirt got its hands on a copy of Miller’s actual complaint. Read it here. It’s at least as ridiculous as Miller’s video, if not more so. Miller claims that Guttormson infringed on his copyright, but this video is well within the bounds of criticism and commentary. Miller claims that Guttormson hacked into his wife’s computer to get the video, but a number of comment threads under the video suggest it was publicly available somewhere. Guttormson herself says that one of her friends, David Smalley, tipped her off about the video.
The defamation claims were equally weak. Miller claims that Guttormson defamed him by calling his sessions “faith-based bullshit.” There’s one problem with that–Miller himself admits that illness is of a dark path. Miller also claims that calling him a “con man” is defamatory, but it’s well established that this is almost always within the bounds of fair comment and criticism. Cliff Notes version: this was a textbook SLAPP lawsuit.
Guttormson didn’t take this lying down. She set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise $75,000 (originally $10,000) to fund her legal expenses. She was just over one-third of the way to her goal when she got a surprise on Wednesday morning–Miller had decided to drop the lawsuit without prejudice, which theoretically gives him the right to refile. Guttormson would be well within her rights under copyright law to seek a declaratory finding of non-infringement–which would in turn give her the right to send Miller the bill for her legal fees. However, Guttormson said on her Facebook page that she isn’t going that route.
Since Miller still has the right to launch his lawsuit again, Guttormson is still fundraising in the event that he does so, with all funds above $75,000 going to Opportunity Village. Miller would be a fool to refile, though. On the face of it, this looks like the very definition of a frivolous lawsuit. It’s also a strong argument for a federal anti-SLAPP law, along the lines of several state laws that offer statutory protections against this kind of lawsuit abuse.
Moreover, the lawsuit actually had the effect of turning the hot lights on Miller. From the time Guttormson first posted her video attack on Miller to the time Miller filed his lawsuit, it garnered a grand total of 5,000 views. As of Sunday afternoon, it has over 56,000 views. In other words–Miller’s efforts to muzzle Guttormson have actually allowed more people to see that he’s a quack. That, friends, is a textbook case of the Streisand effect.
