Music critic Anthony Fantano has shared a video detailing his victory in a defamation case against Ronnie Radke, the lead singer of Falling In Reverse.
Anthony Fantano, also known as ‘The Needle Drop‘ on Youtube, has shared a video discussing his defamation case, which was served by Falling In Reverse frontman Ronnie Radke.
Radke lodged the lawsuit after Fantano released a video in 2023 titled, ‘This Guy Sucks,’ which lobbed criticisms at Radke’s music and his character, while alluding to accusations made against him. Radke’s original complaint stated:
“Fantano‘s nearly eight-minute verbal tirade regarding Radke——whom the defendant does not know and has never even met——goes beyond the bounds of permissible commentary and extends into the realm of actionable innuendo, unfounded rumormongering and outright untruth.”
While both were quiet throughout the duration of the lawsuit, Radke would share an update earlier this month announcing that he had lost the lawsuit. In his video, ‘I LOST MY LAWSUIT WITH ANTHONY FANTANO‘, the Falling In Reverse singer would also deny several claims made against him, yet also admit that even his lawyers didn’t think he would win the case.
Well, today, Fantano has released his own video titled ‘He Sued Me (I WON)’, sharing his perspective on the lawsuit.
“It’s time for a review of a lawsuit that was recently filed against me and was hilariously dismissed,” Fantano says at the beginning of the video. The 16-minute video would present Fantano’s reasons for creating his original piece on Radke in the first place, explaining why he chose to fight the defamation case and sharing some admittedly very funny missteps from Radke’s legal team.
In his video, Fantano reveals that Radke and his team ended up suing a different Anthony Fantano. Apparently, it took Radke’s team time to notice the error, and even when they served the music critic, his initial was still wrong.
Fantano also revealed that he used the SLAPP law (strategic lawsuits against public participation) to defend himself, as he felt that Radke was suing him as a method to silence him.
“All of the headlines and Ronnie’s tweets and crash-outs and announcements on this topic publicly essentially put me in the position where I was like I have to see this through,” Fantano shared. “I can’t just allow this to quietly settle in his favour or anything like that because that’s going to send the message that anybody who hates me can just pull up with lawyers anytime I say something they don’t like and shut me down entirely.”
Fantano would conclude his video by admitting that the process was trying, and that the costs and time dedicated to the lawsuit did leave him a little shaken.
“While yeah it was not super positive, it was kind of necessary. As my lawyer Emilio told me …. there is some serious historical precedent to this decision because there’s not quite a lot of lawsuits like this one in the modern era, where someone in the music commentary space is having to defend themselves in quite this way,” he shared.
“Sure, while I could have saved myself some headache by paying Ronald some money and taking the video down, after that I know I wouldn’t have been able to look at myself in the mirror because that would have been a betrayal of how I actually felt and most likely would have created more headaches down the road,” he concluded.
You can watch Anthony Fantano’s full video below.
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