Arthur Friedman asked his wife to have sex with other men. She said yes and fell in love with the third wheel. Art then sued the invitee and won $4,802 under Illinois’s alienation of affection doctrine.
Aside from voyeurism the case raises some interesting issues. Friedman surely does not have a right to his wife’s affection – he can’t sue her if she doesn’t love him – so if another man steals what Friedman does not own how can Friedman have a claim against the other man? It’s cases like this that push me towards Murray Rothbard’s position that you don’t have a right to other people’s thoughts. As a result, there can be no just laws against alienation of affection but also since you do not have a right to your reputation (it is in other people’s heads) there can be no just laws against libel.
Thanks to Monique van Hoek for the pointer.
I don’t think the issue is whether Friedman’s wife loved him or not. If they stayed married and she didn’t “love† him, then he wouldn’t have a case. The point is that she is exiting the “marriage contract† and he’s arguing that it’s the third wheel’s fault. So, Art sued for “damages†. I don’t know whether this was really a good argument or not, considering Art asked her to have sex with the guy. But I wouldn’t second guess the judge, who heard hours of debate and testimony, based on a 5 paragraph story I found on the intarweb.
Surely the case of libel is an extension of the “force or fraud” doctrine – if I have the right that you mustn’t tell lies *to* me in a way that is damaging to me, then it’s not difficult to extend that to a right that you mustn’t tell lies *about* me in a way that is damaging to me.
Friedman surely does not have a right to his wife’s affection
Not sure why not. If she owns the thoughts in her head she can sell them to her husband, the implementation of which is a contract in which she promises to love him forever and he can claim damages if she stops. (In practice the consideration he offers for her love is his. Even the enormity of the evidential difficulty that raises shouldn’t be an argument against the principle though, just its enforceability. )
With regard to the libel point, as is often the case talking about this in terms of “rights” (such as a “right” to your reputation) obscures the issue. The question is, do we want to live in a society where, for example, you can spread a rumor about another person (say, he is a child molester) and that person can lose his job because of it? I think most people would answer that saying things that harm a person’s reputation in this way should be prohibited. Sometimes it’s best to avoid the language of “rights” and just use common sense.
In a fiat money system, money is merely information. Theft of money is falsification of that information.
A right to money is a right to people’s belief in that information. Rejecting the right to people’s thoughts
is rejecting their right to money (under a fiat system).
I like this a whole lot.
I do not quite understand why Professor Cowen thinks that it should be legal for someone to make up stories about how he molested her when she was 14, or for a colleague to falsely accuse him of plagiarism.
Perhaps he will explain that in a follow-up post.
Didn’t Friedman essentially void his marriage contract by having his wife have sex with other people?
I (sort of) get the argument that in inducing the wife to breach her marriage contract, the husband has a claim against his ex’s new husband.
But each party to a marriage contract is free to exercise his/her option to end the marriage by seeking a divorce.
Since when does my inducing someone to exercise his/her option make me liable to being sued by the other party to that contract?
Surely the case of libel is an extension of the “force or fraud” doctrine – if I have the right that you mustn’t tell lies *to* me in a way that is damaging to me, then it’s not difficult to extend that to a right that you mustn’t tell lies *about* me in a way that is damaging to me.
You are not being defrauded when someone lies about you, the person being lied to is. It is their rights that have been violated (assuming contracts were involved rather than just shooting the breeze, where anything goes), not yours.
You are not being defrauded when someone lies about you, the person being lied to is. It is their rights that have been violated (assuming contracts were involved
But contracts are mutually beneficial. So if X spreads a falsehood about me that causes Y to refuse to contract with me, I am damaged.
Suppose I go to a bank, seeking a loan for my business. I would normally be able to get the loan, except that the banker believes, based on misinformation, that I am a dishonest and unreliable borrower, and hence refuses the loan. Clearly I am damaged, whether you choose to call it fraud or something else.
Sorry I misspelled your name Mr. Yomtov.
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