Maude Fontanella needed a fix. It was 1903, and the 28-year old was addicted to cocaine. She was a burlesque performer in Chicago who had adopted "Any Oakley" as her stage name. To get the money she needed to feed her devilish dependence, she stole a man’s pants.

Following Fontanella’s arrest, two of William Randolph Hearst's newspapers ran with a story headlined “Famous Woman Crack Shot ... Steals to Secure Cocaine.” But they had made a grievous error. The newshounds mistook the down-and-out dancer locked up in a downtown Chicago jail cell for the famed sharpshooter Annie Oakley, who had recently retired from Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show. Newspapers across the country picked up the Hearst story, or versions of it, and Annie Oakley's long and hard-earned pristine reputation was ruined, at least for a time.

“The terrible piece … nearly killed me … The only thing that kept me alive was the desire to purge my character,” Oakley said.

For seven years, Oakley tried to get even, pursuing libel lawsuits against the newspapers that ran the story. In response, most newspapers published retractions, but not William Randolph Hearst. He hired a private investigator to uncover sordid details of Oakley’s life, although the investigator came up empty. When it was all over, she lost only one of the 55 suits she had filed. But legal expenses meant she actually lost money defending her name.

Nearly ten years after Oakley prevailed in her final lawsuit, Henry Ford won his first, a case that was as absurd as hers was righteous. Ford took offense when the Chicago Tribune called him an “ignorant idealist” and the auto titan was awarded a whopping one-penny in damages (the Chicago Tribune never paid). A few years later, in 1927, Ford was this time the target of a libel suit, filed by a Jewish activist named Aaron Sapiro. Ford’s newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, had been publishing a series of anti-Semitic columns titled “The International Jew: The World's Problem.” The column ran for a year and a half and was later published as a book.

In one of the pieces the Independent published, Sapiro was labeled a cheat, faker and a fraud, along with other unleavened attacks against Jewish people. Sapiro fought back and sued. Ford did everything he could to avoid testifying. He even faked a car accident so he could claim to be in a hospital bed instead of on a witness stand. The slimy tactic worked and the case ended in a mistrial.

But the publicity was bad for Ford’s reputation, and more importantly to his company’s bottom line, since Jews had begun boycotting the automaker. Aware that he stood to lose if the case ever went before a jury, Ford quietly reached out to Jewish lawyer Louis Marshall. Marshall convinced Ford to fully recant his spurious charges against Jews and publicly apologize. Within two weeks Sapiro dropped his suit.

Defamation is the broad term for words that harm a person's reputation. Slander is the verbal form of defamation, and libel is written. Libel law itself is governed at the state level in America, most of which make it part of the civil code (although 15 states have criminal codes on the books.) The basis for what constitutes defamation in the United States came about from a trial that occurred before the Revolution, in 1735, while the colonies remained under British rule. New York publisher Peter Zenger was sent to prison for printing articles and cartoons that showed the governor in a negative light. But a jury agreed with the plaintiff’s contention that “truth is an absolute defense” against charges of libel. This established that for information to be defamatory, it must be, on the first count, false.

Another key precedent was set when Alabama Safety Commissioner L.B. Sullivan sued the New York Times for an ad the newspaper ran on behalf of supporters of Martin Luther King, Jr. The full-page ad was critical of Alabama police, but the ad had some factual errors. The Supreme Court ruled that, despite the errors, there was no intention on the part of the New York Times to misrepresent the truth. The decision set the standard for the “actual malice” test, ruling that a newspaper must “knowingly published a false statement” or publish “with reckless disregard whether false or not.” Later, the Court made the distinction between a public figure (and public official) and a private one, ruling that the “actual malice” test does not apply to ordinary citizens.

The defamation law in the United Kingdom is similar to that of the United States, except it has no “actual malice” standard, nor does it distinguish between private and public figures. This makes the U.K. an attractive place to sue publications. In 2005, film director Roman Polanski took advantage of “venue shopping,” as it is sometimes called, to sue Vanity Fair in a British Court expressly because British law does not set the bar higher for public figures nor require plaintiffs to prove any premeditated ill will (AKA malice). Polanski did what a lot of famous people do, he took to “libel tourism” to have his day in court.

“Many untruths have been published about me, most of which I have ignored,” Polanski said at his London trial via video link from France. Polanski was worried the British could extradite him to the United States if he showed up in person. (In 1977 Polanski was charged with sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl, charges that were never dropped.) “But the allegations printed in the July 2002 edition of Vanity Fair could not go unchallenged.”

In 1969, Polanski's wife, Sharon Tate, was brutally murdered by Charles Manson and members of his cult. Tate was eight months pregnant at the time of her death. In a 2002 article on the director, Vanity Fair alleged that en route to Tate’s funeral, Polanski was already on the prowl at Elaine’s a popular New York City hangout, trying to seduce a Scandinavian model by promising to make her “another Sharon Tate.”

“Three years of my life have been interrupted,” Polanski said at trial. “Three years within which I have had no choice but to relive the horrible events of August 1969, the murders of my wife, my unborn child and my friends.”

Heavyweights like actress Mia Farrow testified in support of Polanski. (Several years earlier, Farrow starred in one Polanski’s most famous films, Rosemary’s Baby.) During the trial the director produced evidence that showed he could not been at Elaine’s the night Vanity Fair claimed he had been. Instead, he had flown to Los Angeles from his London home to attend Tate’s funeral. Vanity Fair admitted its writer may have gotten the date wrong, later saying it happened two weeks later. Still, the damage was done and Polanski was awarded $2 million.

More than a hundred years after Annie Oakley took on the press, President Donald Trump put her to shame when it came to the number of defamation suits lawyers have filed on his behalf—more than 4,000 lawsuits, scores of which are defamation suits against journalists he claims libeled him. He has yet to win a case. Further, he has threatened time and again to “open up the libel laws. But legal experts do not appear concerned, since there is no federal libel law to amend..

“Libel law is a state law—50 of them—not federal, so there’s nothing for Congress to 'change,' says Floyd Abrams, who represented the New York Times against the government when the Nixon administration tried to prevent the Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers. “The First Amendment bars the very sort of changes in libel law that the President would like. For the past 53 years, the Supreme Court has made plain that a public official such as the President must not only prove that what was said about him was false, but that it was uttered with actual knowledge or suspicion of its falsity.

It is, he added, “an extremely protective shield for the press.”