Rod Wheeler’s defamation suit against Fox News and Butowski in the Seth Rich affair cannot go forward, district judge rules.
The District Judge wrote that Rod Wheeler “cannot now seek to avoid the consequences of his own complicity and coordinated assistance in perpetuating a politically motivated story [about Seth Rich’s murder] not having any basis in fact.” 
Seth Rich’s parents’ separate suit claiming intentional infliction of emotional distress was also disallowed; the judge wrote that the Fox News reporter’s false reporting about Rich’s murder does “not rise to the level of extreme and outrageous conduct.” documentcloud.org/documents/4630…
This may sound like a value judgment, but a long line of New York cases have effectively found that false and defamatory statements can’t serve as the “extreme and outrageous conduct” limb of an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim.
The basic issue here is that the most natural claims against Fox et al would be defamation claims on Seth’s behalf; however, only a living person can bring a defamation suit. An estate can’t. So they tried to shoehorn IIED claims by relatives and the judge wouldn’t go for it.
