listening to these proceedings on you tube and i wonder if we put judicial proceedings privilege aside and other privileges if i were so bold and foolish to defame one of your honors in the course of  proceeding would your honor have to come to the district court for the district of la say yes to sue me for defamation or would you in your home state where your reputation has been har suffer mental anguish where your job perhaps has been put in jeopardy be able to sue in your home state that's the question that's before the court today question that this court has not directly answered mr diamond sting resides in the district of columbia he works in the district of columbia when he suffers professional harm to his reputation district of columbia is where it's no felt including financial harm potentially risk to his current job and potentially  future income or future employment opportunities when he suffers mental anguish the district of columbia is where it is felt yet the a pelleas the defendants below for the purpose of destroying mr dynasties reputation and causing him to lose his job in an election for president of the american postal workers union i thought i thought what i thought he won the election he  did your honor he won the election causing him to lose his job for the for the purpose of causing and their goal was to i am of his reputation how can they publish these false and defamatory allegations that accused him of crimes were being involved in money laundering so where i just have a couple i could just a couple quick technical questions ok so the indiana defendant he put this on his on his own website right is that where he put it that's correct your honor and that's accessible any way anybody could google that is that correct that's correct your honor ok and then or organization and and that the funding had created that and then he call out anybody who asks to be a member of that group and to be a member of that group in this group was targeted towards other members of the american postal workers union so i don't recall offhand how many members of that group i think it was upwards of three thousand there are but that's approximately how many people that facebook post was available to ok so your theory then is that when something uploaded or quote public uploaded or quote published on the internet it's published everywhere write it that is correct your honor it is published everywhere but that does not under your theory there would be then you would be proper were ever in a defamation case whatever the curse and the target of the alleged allegedly defamatory statement lydd correct think that that one could adopt the distance that the discussion in the sydell case out of the district of maryland that at least allows for that to be in most cases and also by the way this court's decision in crane which was about personal jurisdiction but also talked about where the the injury is no substantially fell and of course again your honor we're talking about a statue that allows a venue wherever a substantial part of the events giving rise to the claim occurred and substantial as the cases have informed us does not mean the largest part or the most part but a substantial part in following just just about any court's jurisprudence in defamation law which admittedly in this day and age presents some unique circumstances we all know as as this court said in crane the defamation the act of defamation is not where it originates but it's where to rot and that's where it's read it's where the jurisdiction case and we cited in our reply brief put up and and i will try to pull it up your honor that the courts have recognized that the issues of venue and personal jurisdiction are closely related and that doesn't mean they're i cal but but certainly in this context because the issue of venue looks at where a substantial part of the claim arises in a defamation case particularly an online defamation case where we have this issue that it goes everywhere we need to look at other in disha you know what the courts have done for both personal jurisdiction and venue is look to where the harm is no substantially felt and so the court can look at the crane case because there's a great discussion about where hardware defamation occurs and where harm is felt and then we can move to the district court cases that have almost uniformly but not uniformly taken the approach that we offer in our brief and again i keep mentioning the sidel case that we also cite right miller at success a host of district court cases from all over the country that talk about this issue which seems logical especially in the context of the illogical result that would otherwise happen it's logical for the reasons i said whether i was foolish enough to defame one of you or the defendants in this case to defame mr diamond seeing the effect is felt at home and at work which are both the same place for mr diamond that is one of the places where the publication necessarily a curse that is where he is injured that is where he suffers his mental anguish that is where the courts in the law that whose job it is to protect mr di haven't seen the state that has interest or direct the district and the the absurd result in the other situation would be that we have these two defendants who may or may not have worked in collusion with each other that venue this determination contrary to what we assert would result and mr diamond seen either having venue in no court or having to raise the same claims based on the same facts and circumstances and the same defamatory allegations in two different district courts because there's no evidence that there is personal about campaign speech in the context of an allotment the election was for president of the union and the people vote on that in that election or the members the members are all over the united least publication injury it show that at least those two things injury and publication and this is this is a motion to dismiss that we look at the complete and complain that he suffered the works in the district that he suffered injury and mental reputation in the district so why for why for purposes of emotions miss isn't that adequate why isn't that enough to say that that the substantial portions of this claim arise in the district this is where the injury was saw or read the blog post issue so if he the complaint fails just simply on conservation what is the if no one read the post how can he no anywhere in the united states or even perhaps in the world because anyone in the united states or the wirral could see the scopes perpetually but that contradicts what you just said because someone may have seen the post and believed it and that would have caused them not to have voted for him so you're saying that the theory of his complaint is that is that the injury is essentially wherever you nion members are but i guess what judge tago is saying is that isn't it also a fair reading of the complaint that he's saying that he is you know it can't it can't be just one union member in alaska read the post and therefore you can be sued in alaska i mean if the defense can be sued i'm a last they're reading out th this is where most of the subscriptions of the national enquirer were were and if they suffered loss of some subscription in california it could substantially affect the publication well none of the showings  instant the defendants have to put this on the internet they had sent a letter to every member is huge that it would be the same situation it would be then you would not be property except in that case that fact would demonstrate the likelihood that somebody actually district of columbia actually saw it and read it i mean he does  pay in order to access them you know the issue the issue that we're discussing has come up over the over many years but not in the context of the internet in the context of newspapers  example the new york times which newspapers appear and probably every jurisdiction of the state of the union and one of the problems that i that your interpretation of the venue statute seems to solve that is that that you can get you could get a libel action in from something printed in the new york times and have a cause of action in every state of the union i mean that's one of the things that motivated the supreme court to decide new york times versus sullivan in the way that they did and so which leads me to this question what if what if he had sued simply in this appear your court where the  understanding is that the payment is that you'll check off system is gone and it's a deduction from wages and the deduction would have occurred where these two gentlemen were employed by the post right and not only to happen but the money actually grotesque form shopping looking for you know the state that has you know the best laws anywhere the united states or perhaps the world and that and that turns the statute on of th say that's where the injury occurred that the purpose of living and working if the common sense idea in some cases where you know that's where the decision makers are th decide whether or not you're going to be employed ok so the supervisors and the you know black supervisors that to decide whether you're going to be employed less opportunities here is members all the united states that decides whether or not he's going to be the other the other consideration that troubled me a little bit is that the the venue's statute one thousand three hundred and ninety one ad be to i think it is doesn't speak in terms of where the injury occurred the injury could have occurred anywhere but the statute talks about where were the events leading to the ensure reoccur and of course the events are the posting of the items on the  arguing for a more conservative approach to venue than counsel is arguing nobody has argued that every place where it's published results and daniel what we've said is that a substantial part that s statute says a substantial part of the events giving rise to the claim occurred and as i've said this court recognized and crane as other courts have recognized it's the receipt of the publication and it is also the harm to the  to to a claim right if it doesn't say where the injury occurred doesn't know but you're on a damage to reputation is one of the events that give rise to the cl the initial posting where did the initial posting occur that those occurred in their home states your honor and as we know none of us would argue that venue could exist or should exist everywhere we also know that  is not that venue only exists in one jurisdiction so here there might be for each defendant two jurisdictions where venue is proper both the district of columbia and the defendant's own jurisdictions remember they targeted this mr bott seems to argue that this is to protect defendants but defamation law is to protect the people who have been defamed these defendants aimed their attack at mr dynasty in d c they intended for him to lose his job in d c by damaging his reputation they intended him to suffer mental anguish in d c by an attack on his reputation and let's recall also that under d c law harm presumed when there is defamation per se as we have alleged which means that the harm is assumed to happen everywhere but his reputation how it works where is personal jurisdiction how do you get the personal jurisdiction in the district of columbia well your honor i believe that under the crane case personal jurisdiction occurs in d c exists in d c obviously it exists in the defendant's home states but i believe that d s the district of columbia also has personal jurisdiction over these the and that's under the king case because they caused injury in the district of columbia that's what they intended to do and we don't even need to get to the district of columbia plus factors under that standard if we even get to the district of columbia plus factors i might note that we're not alleging that simply because they're members of an organization that they do but in addition they through this organization they negotiate their employment contracts in the district of columbia so the organization acts as their agent to do things that they otherwise then the local you know the national union handles things like negotiating health benefits with that with the united states postal service and other collective bargaining issues so there are some things that happen at the yoke of local union they pay dues to both the local union and the national union and they through their membership in the union have that union act as their agent in the district of columbia to negotiate with the united states postal service which if there were no something can be downloaded from the internet in the district columbia is not sufficient to confer personal jurisdiction i just wonder how you distinguish kids well i don't see that so that's not too different from other cases i think that that is there are precedents in our court that say that when you have a venue question and a personal jurisdiction question that you know each should decide excuse me you should decide the personal jurisdiction question st are you familiar with those cases yes your honor and i think that counsel frankly for both sides and i don't mean to put words in mr bob's mouth but i think based on the briefings below you would see that counsel for both sides believed that that the court would decide the personal jurisdiction issue or st you know but didn't and then there isn't least one case in our circuit that says if the district court goes ahead and decides venue without addressing personal jurisdiction the district court has to give reasons for doing it that way i'm not familiar with that authority your honor but it makes sense you know what about mr bob's argument that there's no allegation that anybody in the district of columbia really were necessary and i don't think it has but were necessary to make that allegation then the court below should have given us leave to ame because that certainly is not something that's not curable particularly on a simple venue motion well you think it's necessary but i don't know what you're asking for not being necessary i don't think it's necessary because i think as your honor mentioned before it actually doesn't matter whether anybody in the district read it the fact is that even if every single person who read it was in every single jurisdiction that the union members were in except the district the harm to reputation affects mr dynasty in the district both for his potential current and future employment for emotional distress as we've discussed in for other things and and that's exactly one of the things also that the presumed damages  who has the st person told the nd person to a rd person and so presume the only just allows a person to bring a defamation claim without any proof of actual harm to reputation whatsoever allowing the jury to presume such damages and determine what harm does that is and the last point related to that your honor for me to take twelve seconds is if if the court were to look at the the cases throughout the country on issues of statute of limitations for defamation it's published on the internet a defendant a plaintiff can never say i didn't see it i'm sorry i didn't see it so the statue of limitations that run because of delayed discovery because the law presumes that something that's out on the internet is seen by everybody that it's available to be seen by at least for procedural