Throughout the documentary the filmmakers keep talking about how scared they are of the legal action that D'amato or anyone else is threatening to take. Can you really take legal action against someone for making a documentary? This was confusing to me.
shareThat's beside the point. Even if D'Amato has no fundaments, the process is gonna be super expensive and D'Amato is the only one who can afford it. The people doing the documentary would have to spend a lot of money even if the sentence at the end is sure to say D'Amato is a douchebag.
shareYes, you can. A rich person needs no actual legal standing to ruin a persons life through use of the legal system. Even if all lawsuits get thrown out as specious, a person would have to defend themselves or else would have default judgments against them levied without the issues even being addressed in court. Aside from that, in the film charges of libel are mentioned. Libel 'is the written "publication" of a defamatory remark that has the tendency to injure another's reputation or character' (excerpt taken from the 'Slander Vs Libel' page on law.com). I am not familiar with the legalities involved in suits charging libel, but I imagine he could pursue such suits. I would guess that he would not push things at this point, though, since he would have to go up against HBO and fighting a first amendment case in the USA, at least, is very difficult. If it were in the UK, which has very draconian libel laws, the situation would be different. I have no idea what the situation is in New Zealand.
shareWhat would the point of D'Amato suing the documentary makers be, exactly? As far as I can see, it wouldn't make his particular problem go away in convincing everyone that he's not behind all this nefariousness. Time to sue would have been before the film was released, but now that it is, the cat is out of the bag.
Considering the evidence uncovered in the film, and considering D'Amato had a prior conviction for the exact same type of crime, isn't he also prone to facing not only more criminal proceedings, but also a joint lawsuit from the many young men he's alleged to have blackmailed? He may have a lot of money, but fighting a three front legal battle would be a hell of a way to burn through it in double quick time.
The ending of the film should've cleared up any confusion about the legal matters.
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