By Tery Buhl.
Texas oil millionaire T. Boone Pickens is trying to use the Dallas state courts to squash his son’s first amendment rights after Mike Pickens wrote a tell-all blog about the famed hedge fund manager’s troubling family dynamics. The blog titled 5 days in Connecticut posted ‘my story’ which centers on how 85-year old Boone’s emotional abuse caused his 55-year old son’s drug and alcohol abuse along with a litany of other alleged facts going back to childhood whippings.
In the original compliant Boone first tried to call Mike’s actions Cyber-bullying/ Cyber-harassment but the actual legal claim that was filed was invasion of privacy and common law defamation. Texas doesn’t actually have Cyber-bullying laws for adult online speech but that didn’t stop Caleb Melby, Forbes staff writer, to headline a story last month that Boone was suing for Cyber-bullying.
In something that reads like a hit piece written especially for a Forbes labeled Billionaire, who likely is only a millionaire these days, Forbes misses the guts of the legal dynamics that are actually happening. Boone, who has a history of suing if you write negatively about him, is throwing cash at lawyers to stop speech because it feels uncomfortable.
He even got a two week temporary injunction order on his son, Mike, to force him to take the story down but Mike’s lawyer ,Collin Porterfield, got it amended on March 1st at a hearing about the injunction. Court transcripts show Judge Parker also told Boone’s attorney that they didn’t have a Cyber-bullying claim but Forbes ignored that or didn’t bother to check the transcript and still reported this was the legal action Boone took.
On top of that, after the court allowed Mike to print an edited version of the story, Boone fired his lawyer and picked a new one named Leland de la Garza of Shackelford, Melton & McKinley, LLP. The new attorney’s 3rd amended complaint doesn’t focus on Cyber-bullying this time and was filed April 13th, a few days before the Forbes story ran. Still Forbes runs an inaccurate headline that Mike is being sued for Cyber-bullying.
For more information on Teri’s Investigative piece go to: http://www.teribuhl.com/2013/05/03/hedgie-t-boone-pickens-sues-to-squash-sons-tell-all-speech-about-family-emotional-abuse/
