appellant's believe that the district court committed error as a matter of law in terms of dismissing the case because it failed to appreciate a two step in korea under missouri defamation law in terms of how you prove statements that are defamatory so it seems to us that the district court conflated the two the two step in that it basically ignored the settled principle of law that the words that are alleged to be defamatory the statement that is alleged to be defamatory must be analyzed discreetly in terms of whether it is capable of defamatory meaning and in this instance we believe that the district court basically engaged in an unjustified under missouri law analysis of whether this was just to read the words and language was just a response that the before you can a new details tonight ask sort of a jurisdictional question yes this case was removed federal court right yes it was and as i understand it the pleadings only lead to damages of sixty thousand dollars your honor your we have an amount in controversy problem here  i'm embarrassed your honor because i do not remember that the sixty thousand figure this is the st time this has been raised so i just in candor to the court obviously the record is going to demonstrate what that pleading says i didn't prepare for that so i don't have that in my memory i'm going to indulge in the assumption that the question implies that the court has some knowledge by virtue of looking at it because the court has an obligation to yeah i mean it's missouri law it's missouri substantive law there's no federal question presented on the face of the  i have to admit that off the top of my head i do not know the state of the law as to whether a claim for punitive damages when aggregated with a defamatory and in this instance we think that the various words used in the that were cited explicitly and in the petition that was removed to federal court make accusations of liar in conjunction with very specific factual allegations as to whether or not this is in conjunction with business activities these types of statements have repeatedly been determined by missouri courts to be defamatory per se so we do not understand how the court ended up somehow the district court ended up somehow looking to whether or not the statements were in response to an earlier post by my client defendants the apple these are correct that you also have to somehow survive in a state analysis at the at the st step as to whether or not the language used actually is capable of an innocent meaning which is i think what the co well i don't do it i don't believe there is necessarily it may not be the law but i don't think i don't think it's on the face i've seen both of those questions but it makes for a contradictory approach to defamation with statements of sayings and terms of the speaker's evaluation of the particular subjects character and you know integrity in his or  business calling i do not believe that if you were to i mean if you were to apply the prince the principle that you question to its logical extreme you could escape  defamation claim simply by ramping up the hyperbolic nature of your statement and that we think that just logically does not make sense and in fact when you have a statement of something that looks like opinion followed by or in conjunction with a specific discussion of facts that you support that position then what might otherwise look just us at at the st stage to the extent that the just record can be decision can be did you can parse it to actually distinguish between the two steps but we believe that the burden of proof under missouri law as to whether or not the language in question is subject to the opinion privilege is something that the defendant carries the burden of proof on and generally speaking under halliburton for example in missouri  if you can look at the discrete language at the st up and determine that it's defamatory then that ends the game at the motion to dismiss stage you should proceed to the next phases of the juda ca to look at everything in context to determine whether for example there's an opinion privilege i'm in reserve several minutes of my time and well thank  well there's a lot of law that that is true as such giving the language in the statements verbal statements they're playing an ordinary meaning then they're not actionable and the case is over there is you don't get into the nd part as far as a privilege i may be confused i thought this the question was whether it's capable of defamatory moony you just said whether it's just the flip side of ask if the answer to the st question is no the case is over because it's not capable of what the family were meeting right credit if the answer to that question is yes it doesn't mean it's you can't ask the nd question and that is it capable of and it's of meaning and if so it's not actionable i mean you can imagine a legal world in which those two questions coincide without being suggested well maybe maybe these are contradictory but never mind because the answer is the same whichever rule you apply right  different events that would allow certain players with these vouchers to go to that final turn in of champions petition not getting into all the details i think you basically said he called him a liar and under milk of it didn't the missouri supreme court basically say that calling somebody a liar damages the person's reputation and therefore capable of defamatory mean and i think it depends on context you have to look at the various  mr peterson's comment that mr turn times a liar is in response to mr turn tines comments about business dealings he's saying that he's a liar and since or says players that's his opinion about that those are subjective statements that art verifiable data that can be reviewed she says that mr turn tiny fish and greedy because of the way these vouchers were not allowed to be used after he paid for  i don't think the various posts and the video are specific enough to support a defamatory statement as far as mr turn time being a liar about a certain business item i think it's his comm in defense mr pearson's comments in defense that he is a liar as as a person there there are other cases like speaking him and yes generally speaking he doesn't point to a specific part of his a very specific way one well yeah and mr turn tined essentially called mr peterson out for not donating to a charity and mr peterson in a lie and that he's cocking about mr turns and i think that's what the court was looking at that this context of mr peterson on this video blog out to the whole internet universe is like a public speech internet and everything that's out there as far as blogging and people get on in and have these conversations as if it's a public forum and that's the context i think that the court examined with these facebook posts social media and the video th mr peterson defending himself in fact he's giving his opinions as to how i see it what is going on here explaining what his position is and i think that's what the very essence of what our country about being able to speak your mind and stand your ground in state your defense and your thought about it without having to worry about being sued every time when you want to defend yourself and make a statement  the court's analysis under missouri law it properly found that the looked to me like that was kind of a recitation of the history of the relationship that gave rise to the characterizations that is that the valley way of looking at  that i believe it is i think it does give some background he goes through the vouchers in the history of their business relationship and that facebook blogger video so and that's where the court said the average listener  i believe the district court analyzed each post in the video under the counts one through three libel slander libel and then analyze each section separately for each count the language in question is capable of in some innocent interpretation the right whether a reasonable reader would view them innocently i i simply have to state the  disagreement as to whether or not that is reconcilable with the distended of whether they're the words are capable of defamatory meaning i don't think the missouri courts have done a good job of explaining  t language and the language that appears in mandela and ample men i will note importantly nazeri did not decide it missouri ended up determining that he really wasn't necessary to resolve reasonable reader possibly find these words to be innocent as the position we stake out in our briefs is that mandell and ample men and that language should be in effect that nd part of the st part of the test simply and cannot be reconciled i want to take issue though with the the issue as to whether or not the language in question in these three  s whether it can be interpreted as just an opinion what is remarkable about this sequence of posts is that it is related there's a factual history facts about what supports the statement that for example jim turn time as a liar now what that does is it suggests very strongly in the crate cases that we cite look at th where you can determine you've got a bit of a base of facts to support the opinion you can then what allegedly is just the opinion you can then achieve an adjudication to determine whether or not these statements actually were were accurate and that then provides a basis for in effect having an analytical framework down the road in a new juda cation in which the court or perhaps a jury more likely can actually adjudicate whether the language that allegedly our opinions are actually opinion is kind of coupled with facts and or actionable statements and we think that that is exactly what happened here if you look at the transcript of the video i'll make note that it actually concluded with language about selfishness and greed of turn time so embedded within that video itself is a statement of facts the history of the dispute and then you have something words in isolation he's selfish and greedy that could be in isolation determined to be opinion we've cited in our brief you know statements that somebody abuses someone or uses abusive words those were determined to be actual  what we need to do to