[daguy]

Last year Andrew Breitbart, right-wing blogger, posted a heavily edited videotape of a speech by Shirley Sherrod. He presented this video as proof positive that Sherrod, the USDA's Georgia Director of Rural Development, was a racist and executed her job in an overtly racist way.
The unedited, honest videotape showed nothing of the kind--in fact, just the opposite.

Now Ms. Sherrod is suing the guy. And she's not fooling around. The legal team she assembled is first class:

Lastly, the complaint is telling for just who Shirley Sherrod’s attorneys are, and it is a very significant point. There are a team of four attorneys at the DC office of Kirkland & Ellis, Thomas Clare, Michael Jones and Beth Williams with the lead being one Thomas D. Yannucci. And who is Tom Yannucci? Glad you asked. He is, if not the preeminent, one of the most preeminent plaintiffs defamation attorneys in the United States. From a September/October 2000 Columbia Journalism Review article:

In-house lawyers at top news organizations describe him as “extremely aggressive,” “very effective,” a straight shooter, and someone who, more than any other plaintiffs’ lawyer, “strikes fear in news organizations’ hearts.”

Yannucci is the attorney who embarrassed and gutted NBC’s Dateline on the fraudulent GM exploding gas tank story and who obtained a page one above the fold retraction from Gannett Newspapers and the Cincinnati Enquirer, and reportedly $18 million dollars, in the Chiquita Brands story. The Shirley Sherrod Complaint Against Andrew Breitbart | Emptywheel Good for her. Nice to see honest people fighting back against the smear machine.