Did you hear? Elizabeth Hasselbeck, co-host of ABC's The View, and author the diet book "The G-Free Diet: A Gluten-Free Survival Guide" is being sued for copyright infringement by Susan Hassett. Hassett says that Hasselbeck helped herself to substantial portions, pieces, parts, and lists of heavily researched information from her self-published book "Living with Celiac Disease," which Hassett kindly sent her in April 2008, when she heard that Hasselbeck had Celiac Disease.
The complaint reads that Ms. Hasselbeck's book, The G-Free Diet, "includes dozens of paraphrased as well as word for word regurgitations of phrases and scrupulously researched factual data entries" and "utilizes a virtually identical order and format of 13 chapters."
Hasselbeck's attorney made a statement. " . . . . there is no basis for the allegations in the Complaint as published in the press. Ms. Hasselbeck worked diligently and tirelessly on her book and is disappointed in this attempt to discredit her work and her ability to bring this important message to the public."
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Wow. I'm no lawyer, and I certainly won't be the judge in the case, but when reading the letter, I was amazed to see that BOTH books apparently share the same misspelling -- both books used "isle" instead of "aisle" to mean "supermarket aisle"; but "isle" is short for "island." If that wasn't just an error in the letter, and if I were the judge, I'd be taking a hard, HARD look at that similarity -- especially since since Hassett's book was self-published (some typos and minor errors are expected in a self-pubbed book), and Elizabeth Hasselbeck's was published by a major commercial publisher -- meaning it would have been (should have been) carefully edited several times before publication, so should have contained few or no errors. But yet, that *particular *identical error appears in the big-name-published book. And then there's the "similar chapter titles" jolt to consider. Personal opinion? I think Elizabeth Hasselbeck's attorney is going to have to work a little harder than for most celebrity authors to prove "no plagiarism."
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