(This post has been updated.)

Last month, I wrote about two hospitals that sued two newspapers—one in Minnesota, the other in California. Since then, Bill Heisel, a blogger at Reporting on Health, has started a series called Slap aimed at publicizing such incidents of retaliation.

Today, Bill writes about a lawsuit against the LA Times for its coverage of controversial marketing of lap bands. According to Courthouse News Service:

     “A Lap-Band marketer operating as 1 800 Get Thin says the Los Angeles Times perpetrated a “Chicago-style protection scheme” by attacking it in news articles strategically placed beside expensive advertisements for competitors that offer the same procedure.
     After printing “attack articles” about Beverly Hills-based 1 800 Get Thin, and selling convenient ad space to its competitors at a premium, the Times “sold immunity against adverse news” to the competitors and suppressed comments endorsing Get Thin, the complaint states.”

And then I discovered yet another suit, this time against California Watch by Prime Healthcare, accusing it of “repeated fraudulent and defamatory statements.” I have been quite impressed with the California Watch series, Decoding Prime. The series raises questions about the firm’s billing practices. (UPDATE: Christina Jewett at CW informs me that Prime filed a pre-filing discovery order and then dropped it. Prime has not sued CW.)

Filing lawsuits against reporters and news organizations for unfavorable stories is not a good answer. I hope this is not the beginning of a troubling trend.