November 2003. An anonymous writer, posting his message on the Finnish Arvopaperi -magazine’s public forum, described the electronics subcontractor Elcoteq’s chairman of the Board, Antti Piippo, as a “drunk lunatic“. The message passed unnoticed, likely read only by few, although it is difficult to estimate a precise figure.
A year later Mr. Piippo stumbled upon the writing, most probably while googling for himself. He then filed a defamation suit against the writer, whose identity the police were able to trace. The case was closed in the Helsinki Court of Appeal in January of this year. The defendant was ordered to pay €2000 as compensation for the suffering he had inflicted upon Mr. Piippo, as well as €620 in legal fees. It’s worth mentioning that Mr. Piippo gets €600000 a year for serving as Elcoteq’s Chairman of the Board and is also the founder of the company, owning a significant portion of the company. How badly did he need the €2000?
There’s something seriously troubling about this case. A socially unimportant, anonymous writer slandering a prominent public figure is not uncommon in Finland, nor is it usually seen as socially unacceptable. If I walked into a bar in Helsinki, I would very likely hear a lot of people slander and mock politicians, business leaders and celebrities. Nobody would give a flying flock about it. I’m not a lawyer, but commom sense tells me that harmful, possibly incorrect comments about prominent figures by socially insignificant figures, should not be any basis for a lawsuit, unless carried out in a truly spectacular fashion and with overwhelming malice.
What’s interesting about this case is the fact that Mr. Piippo has been convicted of drunk driving. Exactly how inaccurate is it to call a drunk driver “a drunk“? Mr. Piippo has also been convicted of assaulting two women. According to the court Mr. Piippo tied up a 32-year-old woman’s arms and feet with rope and tried to shove tranquilizer in her mouth. He then hit a 26-year-old woman three times with a leather belt (See this article, in Finnish). Sounds pretty nuts, but without any medical record of mental illness, it would indeed be highly inappropriate to call him a lunatic.
The bottom line is that it’s not my place to judge Mr. Piippo, or anyone else for that matter. I know nothing of his family life, his alcohol usage, mental state, characteristics or personality. It would be too hasty to make any judgement about him based on these two sole cases. As a matter of fact I have great respect for his opinions on Finnish economy and politics, globalisation (which he thinks is the greatest peace movement to have emerged since WW2), and his criticism of the Finnish Comprehensive Income Policy Agreement. To simply label him as a drunk lunatic would be a gross understatement of his achievements. He does however, in my opinion, rightly deserve to be criticised for filing the looney defamation lawsuit, which brought him nothing but bad PR and only made the general public all the more aware of his past convictions.
This lawsuit tells me that the Finnish legal system is becoming increasingly American, to the effect that it is is starting to affect freedom of speech. This Americanization of the legal system might actually be good news for me, because now I can finally sue Moccamaster for my caffeine addiction.
Petteri Järvinen has an excellent article on this topic in the printed version of Tietokone magazine 5/2007 (Finnish).
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