Fair enough, but the cited article gave an outside incubation of 2 1/2 months (75 days). Tim had her for longer than that, didn't he? Again, we don't know all of the "what if's" about this yet, but you have to admit it doesn't look to good for Tim.
Even if the suggested hypothetical were true, Tim would still be guilty of selling and shipping a sick snake under false pretenses (the fact that he was doing so to the person from whom he got the animal seems moot to THAT point), and he would still have had a collection that had been exposed for a period of time to a highly contagious, extremely fatal disease. That should make any breeder/customer extremely nervous, wouldn't you agree, Scott?
Also, as to the question of libel (slander is spoken . . . they both begin with "s" is how I remember), you would still have some hurdles to cover, from Tim's position:
Firstly, you would have to prove intent to do harm by Matt. He has stated here that this warning was only so that those who may have purchased from Tim could be encouraged to have their animals tested. No malicious behavior there. Now, Tim may suspect malicious intent, but PROVING it is another issue.
Secondly, Tim has to prove that such malicious-intent-backed behavior actually damaged his business to a certain degree. Now, Tim can show that his business has suffered from this thread, I suppose, but is it due to the statements about a possible virus in his collection, the way he injected a snake full of liquid in an attempt to disguise its malnourished state, the manner in which he has completely ignored the requests of former supporters to come clean on this, or the way in which he completely refused to address ANY of the pertinent issues surrounding this instance? Any, or all, of those issues might cause his business to drop off. I would say that Tim would have a hard time affixing ANY set percentage of damage to Matt's statements.
Thirdly, and most important IMHO, the statements have to be known to be false when they were made. We are not yet even certain they are false at this time. There is no way Matt could have known they were false (if they prove to be, I am not at all convinced one way or the other) when he posted that vet report and drew his own conclusions.
Just a little perspective on the libel issue . . .
