I don't approve of what Carey did selling out to WWASPs.
DISCLAIMER: The following is all entirely my personal opinion:
I don't think Carey caused Sue one tiny bit of genuine economic or social damage by anything untruthful she said about Sue.
Carey came across to me as a bit of an idiot, and I can't see any way she would have possibly been credible enough to actually damage Sue.
I'm not a fan of Sue Scheff, either.
I just don't subscribe to the notion that my enemy's enemy is my friend. If someone on "my side" on an issue is a fool, I'd rather she realize she's a fool and shut up rather than give the other side ammunition.
I think an 11.3 million judgment is absolutely outrageous.
A fundamental aspect of defamation law is that the person has not only said false, defamatory things about you but that the person's statements have caused you social and/or financial harm because people believed them and treated you differently.
Many people have decided not to like Sue and not to deal with Sue, but none of it is attributable to Carey.
It's just like LItchfield's lawyer's complaints about another poster to Fornits. Sure the poster was saying false, defamatory things about him, but nobody believed the guy because the poster was clearly using that web identity primarily for satire. People who already hate Litchfield found it funny, but it influenced nobody's opinion to in any way socially or financially shun Litchfield. Nobody who didn't already hate him was going to take that clear satire seriously, anyway.
Same with Carey. I don't care if some of the things she said about Sue did turn out to be demonstrably false or not. Only a total idiot would have changed their mind about anybody or anything based on Carey's say so.
I suppose Sue could have chosen to argue that total idiots were her primary customer base, but if I were her I wouldn't have wanted to assert that on the record in court.
This case should have been dismissed on the grounds that Sue did not suffer financial or social harm.
Julie