WWW- Aging daredevil Evel Knievel cannot sue a Web site that ran a photo of him with two women above a caption reading “You’re never too old to be a pimp,” an appeals court ruled yesterday.
The term “pimp” was probably intended as a compliment, the court said.
The motorcycle maniac blew a gasket when he saw the photo in 2001 on EXPN.com showing Knievel, 66, with his arms around his wife and a second young woman.
He sued, but a Montana judge threw out the suit. Yesterday, he was revving up to take his case to the Supreme Court.
The judges “disregarded the goddamn law and they ought to be discharged, they ought to be ashamed of themselves,” Knievel said. “What good is law in the United States of America if five or six goddamn bimbos are going to rule against it?”
The judges noted that the offending photo and caption ran alongside shots of other people with captions that, in the words of a lower court ruling, “contained loose, figurative, slang language.”
“Although the word ‘pimp’ may be reasonably capable of defamatory meaning when read in isolation, we agree with the district court’s assessment that ‘the term loses its meaning when considered in the context presented here,'” Judge Wallace Tashima wrote in the 2-1 decision.
“The term ‘pimp’ as used on the EXPN.com Web site was not intended as a criminal accusation, nor was it reasonably susceptible to such a literal interpretation. Ironically, it was most likely intended as a compliment.”