Website can call Evel Knievel a 'pimp'

SAN FRANCISCO - Motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel cannot sue a website that published a photo of him with two women above a caption reading "You're never too old to be a pimp," a US appeals court ruled on Tuesday.

The term "pimp" was probably intended as a compliment, the court said. But Knievel said: "What good is law in the United States of America if five or six goddamn bimbos are going to rule against it?"

Knievel sued after ESPN, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Co, published a photo of him at the Action Sports and Music Awards in 2001 with his arms around his wife and a second young woman.

The photo on the EXPN.com website ran alongside that of other people with captions that, in the words of a lower court ruling, "contained loose, figurative, slang language".

Knievel, who gained notoriety jumping over rows of buses, trucks and other barriers in the 1960s and 1970s, sued, alleging the photo brought him and his wife "public disgrace and scandal".

After a Montana district court dismissed the case at the request of ESPN, Knievel appealed to the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals based in San Francisco.

"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 for the three-judge panel.

"The term 'pimp' as used on the EXPN.com website 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."

In a dissent that quoted William Shakespeare, Judge Carlos Bea backed Knievel. "Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls," he said.

- REUTERS