ATLANTA — (Note: The video above this article relates to a different coupon incident.)
A Florida woman who sued a website over labeling her a "pantless couponer" after she was arrested during an incident at a Best Buy has now had both a federal district court and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rule against her because the content was deemed a news article, or at least close enough to one.
According to her original complaint, the incident happened back in 2016 in central Florida.
The complaint details how it began with a dispute between the woman and a Best Buy employee over using a coupon, which escalated to the manager calling 911 to have her removed from the premises.
In the course of that call, the manager said the woman was "showing her a**."
That led to the headline on the quasi-news site couponsinthenews.com: "Pantless Couponer Arrested After Checkout Dispute."
The website appears to be a mix of trade news for the coupon and retail industry as well as a resource for obtaining coupons.
It describes itself as a source of "daily news stories and information about coupons, grocery shopping and saving money."
The Florida woman's argument, according to the 11th Circuit's ruling, boiled down to a claim that Coupons in the News was not a news website, but a "digital marketing tool known as a click funnel advertisement designed and used solely to promote the business of coupons which is advertising."
The marketing software company SharpSpring defines click funnels as web pages designed to take an internet user or consumer "to a landing page specific to a product or service your business sells."
The woman's argument, in effect, was that Coupons in the News wasn't designed for actual news purposes, but to create content that would eventually lead people to buying something (presumably, using a coupon).
These distinctions between news and "sponsored content" style news can be murky when the sponsored content isn't clearly labeled as such. In 2015 the Federal Trade Commission issued guidelines on "native advertising" - that is, "content that bears a similarity to the news, feature articles, product reviews, entertainment, and other material that surrounds it online."
In this case, the woman argued that "Pantless Couponer Arrested After Checkout Dispute" was essentially an advertisement designed "to go 'viral' and gain traffic to (Coupons in the News and Best Buy)."
The article "states she 'allegedly dropped her pants,' thereby contemptuously ridiculing and maliciously dehumanizing plaintiff on the Internet, nationally and globally," the original complain claimed.
"Further, the article is scornful and taunts and mocks her by repeatedly calling attention to her pants as follows: '…she’ll have to go somewhere else to buy… preferably with her pants on.' '…Literally. Please. Keep your pants on.' The photograph is a mug shot greatly enlarged to almost half a page and the article includes advertising requests '...if you like this article, please consider subscribing,'" it added.
The complaint further asserted that the pulling of the woman's pants down "did not happen." (It seems possible the manager's 911 reference to "showing her a**" was not meant literally, and was instead a reference to the colloquial term that basically means embarrassing yourself.)
But, in a ruling employing a deferential and expansive view of press protections, the 11th Circuit found the story was "on its face... an article reporting on (the) arrest. It is not an advertisement. Nor is it commercial speech."
The Atlanta appeals court dismissed the woman's suit with prejudice. Cornell Law said such a ruling can mean the court has decided "the plaintiff acted irresponsibly or in bad faith." It's a more final sort of ruling that means the woman cannot try her lawsuit again on other grounds or in another court - the action has been dismissed forever.
And, as such, "Pantless Couponer Arrested After Checkout Dispute" - which remains online - will stay up forever.
