I think it was Shakespeare who said “first kill all the lawyers.” And I reference that quote as someone who, when I am tired of sidebar crashes and 100 emails per day, could very well end up applying to law school. If Shakespeare had been in a better mood, I think he would have said something like: almost all of us, even the lawyers, can agree that sometimes people take litigation too far and sue for ridiculous reasons.
On Tuesday, I read on The Carrot that Anky van Grunsven is suing Astrid Appels of Eurodressage.com under defamation laws for putting up a picture of Anky riding a hyperflexed horse with the caption “Horse in the rollkur, hyperflexed position.” The problem is that the Dutch federation recently declared such methods illegal. To me, a lawsuit sounded pretty extreme, but I was unfamiliar with European defamation law and I decided to wait until more information came out. On Wednesday the story started to gain momentum, and Eurodressage itself posted this article about the lawsuit which took several shots at the Grunsven camp. I was still undecided, that is until I received an email containing the picture in question:
Yep, that’s it. No identifying markings, no logos. Heck, I couldn’t even guess at who the rider was except for the fact that the horse is “in the rollkur, hyperflexed position.” I have no doubt that Eventing Nation will get sued someday, but I hope to God that someone comes up with something better than a short caption on an unrecognizable photo.
Eurodressage will emerge from this stronger than ever–heck, what better publicity than getting sued by Anky van Grunsven? I’ll be interested to see how the lawsuit plays out in court, and, until then, you can watch Astrid get famous on Dutch TV. You can’t understand what anyone is saying unless you speak Dutch, but I find it more fun to make the words up in my head anyhow. Go eventing.
