newspaper lawsuit threat, Kirby Delauter

The newspaper lawsuit threat made by Kirby Delauter, a politician in Maryland, has backfired against him and ended up with different results than what he expected. Delauter made the newspaper lawsuit threat on Facebook after he was upset about a story that was published by the Frederick News Post that covered a disagreement between the politician and a county executive. The disagreement was over keys to county offices and parking spaces, a trivial matter. Kirby posted on his Facebook page “Use my name again unauthorized and you’ll be paying for an attorney, Your rights stop where mine start.” Delauter is a Republican who serves on the Frederick County Council, and apparently he was upset about being mentioned in the article. Instead of backing off the threats made by Kirby just made matters worse for the politician.

After the newspaper lawsuit threat was made on Facebook by Kirby Delauter the newspaper published an article about the threat, mentioning the politician by name once more. In addition an editorial was published that was titled Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter, Kirby Delauter. In this editorial the politician’s name is mentioned no less than 25 times, along with citations from the First Amendment of the US Constitution regarding the guarantee of a free press. On top of this the paper published an acrostic puzzle and the first letter of each paragraph in the puzzle spelled Kirby Delauter as well. According to the paper’s managing editor Terry Headlee “ At first I thought the threat was a joke. I just couldn’t believe that an elected official would say something so stupid,”