Wrong as usual. Better start searching. You won't find a single post of mine that attacks an individual personally. Good luck. You'll only have to sift through about 1500 of them.
Actually, he'd have to sift through 2337 of them (as of the time I write this). Unless of course you're
only referring to SWA-slamming posts; then that might be right, about 1500.
Why are you actually posturing about libel? You're not actually gonna' waste money on a lawyer are you? Tell you what, since you're a good Navy guy and all, I'll save you the money and tell you what any lawyer would: You have no case.
1. Libel requires that you prove that you were damaged. If you have the same job, making the same money, and no one in a position above you is harassing you (legal definition), then you haven't been damaged.
2. Libel requires intent. The people who "harmed" you have to have intended to harm you by knowingly writing something malicious and false, and that a reasonable person could believe was true, which then caused you said harm.
3. The perceived libel has to be written in such a way as to be intended to be taken seriously. That's why rags like the National Enquirer can print such crap as "Obama having affair with Condaleeza Rice!" and not get sued (or at least successfully) for it.
Pilots annonymously yakking to other pilots on a rumor board is not going to be taken seriously anywhere; not in a court room or an airline's headquarters. "Fubi is a bad pilot," and "Fubi is ugly" are non-quantifiable insults that could
not be reasonably taken seriously. Let's put it this way: if your chief pilot takes action against you because he read that you're a bad pilot on Flight Info, then I'd say you (and your airline, for that matter!) have much bigger problems that who's insulting whom on an annonymous forum.
The word "bad" is subjective and comparative on its face to begin with. I could say that Fubi is a bad pilot, a bad American, a bad person in general, or has a bad attitude, bad manners, and bad breath (gee, this is fun!). I could also say that you're ugly, smell, and scare little children. None of that would be actionable. On the othe hand, if I told your chief or the FAA that you had intentionally violated FARs, or had an unreported incident, AND then acting on such information, they fired, demoted, suspended, or took other action against you, then you would have an actual libel case (unless what I said was true, of course). See the difference?
Anyway, this seems to me to be more of a case of someone who can "can dish it out, but can't take it." By the way, that last sentence also is not an actionable libel. Don't sue me.
Bubba