Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Most people think of personal injury as a physical injury caused by another party.
Not all personal injury causes physical harm. There is a form of personal injury
that does no physical harm, but can be extremely harmful to a person’s reputation
What is defamation?
exposes any living person to hatred, contempt, ridicule, or which causes him/her to
or occupation.
For example, if a person or the news media says or writes something about you
that is understood to lower your reputation, or that keeps people from associating
with you, defamation has occurred. However, if someone says something false
about someone who has died, as reprehensible as that may be, in most states it is
3. that is understood as
2. If the plaintiff is a public figure, he or she must also prove actual malice.
There are ordinarily 6 possible defenses available to a defendant who is sued for
needs to prove that the opinion is honestly held and the comments were not
with malice.
4. Consent. This is rarely available, as plaintiffs will not ordinarily agree to the
the content of a defamatory statement may use this defense. For example, a
is not legally liable for any damages that come about from the statement.
defamatory statement by proving that the plaintiff did not have a good
Slander and libel are two forms of defamation. Slander is a spoken defamation
and libel is the written form. However, radio and television broadcasts that are
defamatory are considered to be libel, rather than slander, even though the
called libel per se. The following are often found to be libelous per se:
• Charges any person with crime, or with having been indicted, convicted, or
loathsome disease;
something with reference to his office, profession, trade, or business that has
Insults and epithets are not normally considered defamatory because they are
Opinions are also not normally considered defamatory because opinions usually
don't contain specific facts that can be proven untrue. Merely labeling a statement
as your "opinion" does not make it so. Courts look at whether a reasonable reader
fact. (A verifiable fact is one capable of being proven true or false.) This is
determined in light of the context of the statement. A few courts have said that
statements made in the context of an Internet bulletin board or chat room are
highly likely to be opinions or hyperbole, but they do look at the remark in context
to see if it's likely to be seen as a true, even if controversial, opinion ("I really hate
opinion ("It's my opinion that Trinity is the hacker who broke into the IRS
database").
Yes, laws relating to defamation are applicable to e-mail and other online
activities. For example, if a person commits libel against you through e-mail or
other on-line activities, the publisher, and any re-publisher, of the offensive
statement can be held accountable for damages. This is why it is wise to be careful
about anything you write in an e-mail message or online chat room. If the victim is
harmed by your action, you can be held liable for his or her losses.
channel, or worry about whether you can make an aggressive advertising claim, it
May someone other than the person who originally made the defamatory
sec. 230 says that online service providers are not publishers of content posted by
their users. Section 230 gives most ISPs and message board hosts the discretion to
others that a posting is defamatory or libelous. Most ISPs and message board hosts
also post terms of service that give them the right to delete or not delete messages
as they see fit and such terms have generally been held to be enforceable under
law.
true story?
If you place a "disclaimer" at the beginning that the people and events have been
changed to protect the innocent, and that any similarities to actual persons, either
character and you can’t be sued. You have the First Amendment, which gives you
freedom of speech.
In order to prove defamation, you have to be able to prove that what was said or
written about you was false. If the information is true, or if you consented to
publication of the material, you will not have a case. However, you may bring a
defamatory action if the comments are so reprehensible and false that they affect
If you have been defamed you may seek both actual damages, to recover the harm
that you have suffered, and punitive damages to punish the person who made the
profession, the court or jury can assess the damages. For other types of defamation
spoken form of slander and the written form of libel. It gives general examples of
However, it is not a substitute for qualified legal advice. Consult with a personal
injury lawyer that specializes in defamation actions if you feel you’ve been
The difference between slander and libel is that libel is the written or otherwise
Slander can also include bodily gestures while libel can include published
entity.
While the right to fairly criticize people or entities and publicly share information
Magazine. He has a few too many libations at the company party, is nursing a
personal grudge about not being able to control his stories, and begins
badmouthing XYZ Magazine to the wives of a few co-workers. He tells the women
that XYZ has no integrity, is always stealing competitor's material, and is set to go
bankrupt because of its horrific management... none of which is true and all of
Let's further hypothesize that Mr. Brooks leaves XYZ to work for ABC Magazine
where he publishes a story about XYZ with the same falsehoods. Now Mr. Brooks
The examples above would remain accurate if Mr. Brooks had been badmouthing a
specific person, rather than a company. However, if Mr. Brooks had targeted a
general group of people without naming anyone specifically, U.S. law does not
allow the plaintiff to be "a group of people," and therefore no recourse would
likely be available through these laws for those who felt they were the intended
victims.
Recently the difference between slander and libel has become less distinct since
dissemination of the spoken words. For this reason defamation through television
or radio is considered libel in countries like Canada, and may be handled as libel in