This section contains the nature of the case and procedural background.

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, written by D looks at a small group of iconoclasts who 'shorted,' or bet against, the subprime mortgage bond market at a time when most investors thought real estate prices would continue to rise (i.e., were 'long'). The book spent 28 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. Chapter 6 comprises twenty-four pages of the 270-page, and one-third of that chapter focuses on a dinner conversation that took place in January 2007. Eisman, one of the parties in the book, was in attendance and was seated next to P. P is the founder and owner of Harding Advisory LLC. He received a BA in economics from the University of Rhode Island and an MBA from Babson College. P spent twelve years of his career in structured finance. P set off on his own in 2006 and founded Harding Advisory. At the time of the January 2007 dinner, Harding was a top-ranked manager of Collateralized Debt Obligations2 (commonly known as 'CDOs') and was on its way to issuing more asset-backed CDOs by volume than any other CDO manager. The book recounts Eisman's interaction and discussions with P at that dinner and paints CDO managers in general, and P in particular, in a negative light. P sued Ds for twenty-six allegedly defamatory statements. Most of the comments were sarcastic, and condescending describing P as a sucker, fool, sleepy, dog shit investments, doesn’t do much of anything, less mentally alert, paid mainly on volume, and after the meal, they raised $550 million to short anything P was buying. The court dismissed the case, and P appealed.

The legal issues presented in this case will be displayed here.

The court's holding and decision will be displayed here.

Legal analysis from Dean's Law Dictionary will be displayed here.