some people want to believe something did happen to her. something happened. okay. something traumatic did occur. that s what the police said last month, there s in evidence that a rape occurred but we can t say for sure that something traumatic didn t happen to her. one thing we do know from the investigation is that it sure as heck did not happen the way the young woman laid it out. and the agrieved parties are now the university of virginia and that fraternity. and how about every student the there who feels personally maligned. danny, i m going to get you to start this because you wrote a phenomenal piece on cnn.com on who gets to sue and get their good name back. in cases like this there s an easy answer right away. you take university of virginia and they re out. the university is a government sbetty because it s a state university. and therefore state or government entities cannot sue for defamation.
joey jackson is a big thief and that s clearly about joey jackson. if on the other hand i say all lawyers are thieves, joey jackson cannot sue me because groups can generally not sue, but there is a theory is it is alive in virginia the small group theory and the idea behind that is if a group is small enough that defaming the group clearly is imputed to the person, then under that small group theory a defamation case can be had. is there anything more apt than a fraternity with anything from 20 to 50 members, when you say the gamma house, and i m making up a fraternity is a bunch of jerks, it s pretty obvious who we re talking about. joey that fraternity at uva was immediately shut down by the university s president and has since then been reinstated but it sounds like they have grounds here. it sounds like they have more than grounds, poppy and tragic to be sure. the reality is it goes back to brian, your issue, rolling stone
gang rain but do not doubt that she was traumatized that something traumatic could have happened to ler. to your point about one in five women we learned on friday about a sexual assault at uva and it happened in the end of march and it didn t happen between a woman and seven men and it happened between a woman and a boyfriend, and now she said the guy assaulted her. it was one of the more common cases. let s bring in our legal panel to talk about this criminal defense attorney tony zafales and joey jackson. rolling stone will not punish anyone fire anyone. is there any legal recourse that could be taken by any of the parties and uva, for example? let s talk about uva and we can remove them. uva is the government right? it s a university and the government cannot sue for defamation. the fraternity is a different story. you have to establish that the statement is about a person.