I am obviously not a lawyer, but part of defamation my understanding is you need to show there was malice behind what was said. Normally this is very difficult to do, and one of the reasons Johnny Depp ended up winning was his lawyers successfully showed to the jury there was malice behind Amber's actions. I think you can show malice behind Nick's actions, as he has consistently over and over again made the same claim against Monty, and done it not just with an angry tone/demeaner, but even in successive words and actions.
Proof of malice would only be necessary if Monty was determined to be a public figure. That may or may not happen. But if it does, Nick is still in a bad situation in terms of a malice argument.
1) He has admitted to becoming familiar with Monty due to doing legal analysis of Monty's 2019 defamation case. The streams are archived and he is on the record in 2019 on a great many aspects of everything associated with calling Monty a pedo. Its really difficult for him to claim that he was just repeating what others said or that he was ignorant of the facts.
2) In a recent stream, he said that he started calling Monty names last October in retaliation for Monty saying in Nick's chat that Nick had deserved to be kicked off youtube. He said in the same stream that he had no contact with Monty between 2019 and October 2022. The admission of him being motivated by retaliation is the basis of a good argument for malice.
3) In that same recent stream, he described what he did in terms of the name calling as - making fun of - Monty. Really dangerous words to have used in terms of malice.
4) In most defamation cases, its extremely difficult to get the defendant to provide information on their motives and intentions. Especially to prove malice. But in the case of Nick, he has provided what amounts to several unofficial depositions to the other side where he describes all his motives and intentions in calling Monty a pedo in great detail. I would say in extraordinary detail. Nick actually answered the entire complaint in the case point-by-point in a stream.
Nick has so trapped himself by his own public statements that any deposition or trial testimony he does is going to be a total nightmare. He can't contradict any of his public statements in a deposition or trial testimony. He can't make different arguments than he already made. He has already said so much that a deposition is almost unnecessary.
He could still possibly get the case dismissed on a couple of different grounds. But IMO the thing that has strengthened Monty's case the most since the beginning has been Nick's own stupid and self-destructive behavior. Nick is the best friend Monty's case has.
