Unterberg et al. v. Jimmy Carter et al

A very odd case:

Litigants in Unterberg et al. v. Jimmy Carter et al. allege that Carter’s 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid contains defamatory falsehoods about the state of Israel. The plaintiffs, who each bought a copy of the book for $27, maintain not that Carter was not entitled to make ‘malicious and false’ statements in the book, but that under New York General Business Law section 349 the plaintiffs’ rights were violated because they assumed they were buying a factual account of Israeli-Palestinian politics. 

Someone involved with the law suit said in the comments to the above blog posting:

It is a shame a former President would demean the office he held by engaging in such conduct, but his right to do so is not at issue in this case. It is about the false marketing and the law’s protection of the consumer from such trickery.

To which someone else replied:

Yes indeed. Going after Bush next?

The law suit seems like a crock to me. Those poor, poor book-buying members of the public: Carter's book practically jumped off the shelf and knocked all their brains out. Bad book!