Defamation Suits Research Articles

Relative Access to Corrective Speech: A New Test for Requiring Actual Malice

The public figure doctrine has become an anachronism. Current First Amendment protections for defamation1 defendants are centered on a simplistic and antiquated conception of the communications environment— one that would appear quaint were it not so pernicious. This outmoded view of communications media cannot account for the dramatic democratization of the means of mass communication spurred by modern technology. The dissimilarity between the contemporary communications environment and the media landscape that informed the public figure doctrine renders current First Amendment protections insufficient and reveals them as inconsistent with the very rationale that demanded their creation. The basic First Amendment framework for defamation suits announced in Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc.2 has changed little in the intervening decades.3 The Court’s consideration of defamation—a cause of action inseparably tied to the act of publication4—necessarily implicated its understanding of the means of mass communication. In 1974, “the media” was easily defined. Print publishers and broadcasters exhausted the universe of those capable of communicating to the masses.5 As a result, the

Anti-Semitism and the Law in Quebec City: The Plamondon Case, 1910-15

On March 30 1910, a Quebec City notary named Plamondon gave a lecture describing Jewish residents as morally debased, parasitic, and a threat to Christians. As a result, residents vandalized and assaulted numerous Quebec City Jews. Benjamin Ortenberg and Louis Lazarovitch launched a defamation suit against Plamondon. They claimed Plamondon harmed their businesses and social affairs, and caused humiliation and grief by portraying them as, “dangerous beings who ... deserve to be persecuted. Plamondon responded that he had simply repeated other authoritative works on the Jewish faith. Many academics, Jewish and Christian religious leaders were called to testify about whether Plamondon's accusations constituted defamation. Counsel for the plaintiffs considered the pamphlets outrageous, unfounded, and calculated to harm every Jewish person in Quebec City. The defence argued Plamondon was exercising his right to freely speak about a national issue. The trial judge dismissed the action with costs, as the pamphlet incriminated the Jewish race in general and did not sufficiently target the plaintiffs by name. The Quebec Court of Appeal unanimously overturned the trial decision, noting that Plamondon had not proven the accusations he made, and the plaintiffs had suffered individual harm as a result of his denigration of Quebec City Jews, “with no exception .... The ruling has been considered a high water-mark in the law of group defamation, but did not result in significant new directions in this area for the future.

'Singapore's Opposition Community - Grassroots Activists in the Concrete Jungle'

Based on data gained from qualitative research techniques, this paper presents and discusses the opinions of leading Singaporean oppositional grassroots activists about the state of play in Singaporean politics and civil society and likely developments over the next ten years. Our interviewees show that the Singaporean grassroots opposition activist community, while small, is passionate and committed to taking its country away from the right-wing authoritarian pathway. Those activists more interested in civil society and NGOs than contesting elections are eager to expand and deepen the civil society in Singapore. We also find that certain school-age opposition activists have already decided that the official establishment ideology, as taught in school textbooks, is not the reality of Singapore’s history as they understand it. Activists will continue to focus on the income-inequality problem and human rights issues surrounding Article 377A of the Penal Code (which continues to make homosexual sexual acts between males illegal), the Internal Security Act (which allows detention without trial), and use of defamation suits by ruling-party politicians to bankrupt opposition party politicians and activists.

Online Reviews of 500 Urologists

Patient demand for easily accessible information about physician quality has led to the development of physician review websites. These sites concern some physicians who argue that ratings can be misleading. In this study we describe the landscape of online reviews of urologists by looking at a sample of ratings and written reviews from popular physician review websites. A total of 500 urologists were randomly selected from a database of 9,940. Numerical ratings from 10 popular physician review websites were collected for each physician and analyzed. Written reviews from a single physician review website were also collected and then categorized as extremely negative/positive, negative/positive or neutral. Our sample consisted of 471 male and 29 female urologists from 39 states including small and large cities and 4 census regions. There were 398 (79.6%) urologists who had at least 1 rating on any of the 10 physician review websites (range 0 to 64). On average the composite rating was based on scores from only 2.4 submitted ratings. Most physicians had positive ratings (86%), with 36% having highly positive ratings. No difference was seen in the median number of reviews when gender (p = 0.72), region (p = 0.87) and city size (p = 0.87) were compared. Written reviews were mostly positive or extremely positive (53%). We advise physicians and patients to be aware that most urologists are rated on at least 1 physician review website, and while most ratings and reviews are favorable, composite scores are typically based on a small number of reviews and, therefore, can be volatile.

Fiat justitia, ruat coelum: Is the International Court of Justice aware of this?

The author takes a critical look at the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion in a case involving defamation suits filed by Malaysian lawyers against a Special Rapporteur to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Malaysia considering the extent to which it diverges from a belief that justice must be realized regardless of consequences, as expressed by the Latin legal phrase, Fiat justitia ruat caelum meaning Let justice be done though the heavens fall.Article by D. Shanmuganathan (PhD Student, Department of Law, University of Wales, Aberystwyth). Published in Amicus Curiae - Journal of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and its Society for Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London.

Restaurant Reviewer Liability For Defamation In A Global Context

A restaurant review may contain statements that the restaurant owners would consider defamatory. While technically there is no bar to a successful defamation suit, there are numerous obstacles, including the opinion nature of the review, the fair comment qualified privilege, and free-speech jurisprudence that requires actual malice before a plaintiff can prevail in a defamation suit against a public figure. In jurisdictions outside of the United States, there are similar restrictions that will also create obstacles to the success of the lawsuit. Although the success of the suit would be more likely under other nations laws, the obstacles still do not rise to the level of a prohibition on such lawsuits. Any business on either side of the dispute the writer/publisher of the review vs. the restaurant and its owners needs to be aware of the evolving law and where a defamation case may or may not be successful. This article examines and discusses obstacles to successful defamation cases in order to provide guidance for businesses that are or may be involved in such litigation.

A Rutland Quarrel, the Court of Chivalry and the Irish Peerage during Charles I's Personal Rule

In July 1635 Sir Henry Mynne defamed William Lord Sherard at the Rutland assizes and set in motion a train of events which reached up to Westminster and across the prerogative court system to highlight some of the more obscure aspects of Charles I's Personal Rule. The case was originally tried in Star Chamber, but then in February 1638 was passed on to the newly reformed Court of Chivalry where it set an important precedent for establishing the court's right to try defamation suits. The trial also became an example of the crown's determination to bolster the honour of the peerage in the face of insults by social inferiors. And, more broadly, the treatment of Sherard offers an insight into Charles's handling of the Irish peerage and the vexed issue of how they were to be ranked in relation to their English counterparts. It illustrates the experiences of a group who, in spite of their pledges of loyalty and support for the crown and prerogative government, found their interests shunted aside as the king promoted the welfare of the more powerful and influential English peerage. Charles's efforts to promote the welfare of the nobility and take them into partnership with the crown formed an important strand of royal policy during the Personal Rule. This case reveals some of its successes and failures.

Celebrity Twitter: Strategies of Intrusion and Disclosure in the Age of Technoculture

Celebrity Twitter: Strategies of Intrusion and Disclosure in the Age of Technoculture

Trends in International Internet Defamation Suits

Emerging trends in international Internet defamation suits from the US, Canada, Australia and the UK, and international efforts in the European Union, American Law Institute, International Bar Association and the Hague Convention to harmonize the laws in international Internet defamation are evaluated to see emerging areas of commonality that might be useful in harmonizing the laws in the phenomenon of global Internet defamation liability. This study proposes the utilization of existing commonalities in laws, as well as emerging standards from the efforts to harmonize laws by the EU and current international judicial dispositions, as parameters for an international agreement on Internet torts.

Restricting Free Speech: The Impact on Opposition Parties in Singapore

Although there has been a great deal of publicity surrounding the restriction of free speech with regard to opposition parties in Singapore, in real terms, the value of free speech for such parties is limited. First, defamation laws in Singapore require the opposition parties to exercise extreme caution to ensure political comments do not result in costly defamation suits or even imprisonment. Second, free speech in itself is of limited use politically for opposition parties if the content of this speech is not disseminated widely by the local media. As a result, both the fear of legal suits and the limited dissemination of content continue to restrict the potential of free speech for opposition parties in Singapore. This means the contribution of free speech activities to inter-party debate is low in Singapore, thereby undermining the fundamental role of democracy premised on fair inter-party competition.

Defamation and the Art of Backfire

<p>Legal discussions of defamation commonly focus on defamation law, with relative neglect of struggles that take place over defamation matters. To understand defamation struggles, we introduce backfire theory: if something<br />is perceived as unjust and information about it is communicated to relevant<br />audiences, it has the potential to backfire against those held responsible. <br />Defamation suits have the potential to backfire when they are seen as<br />oppressive or contrary to free speech. There are several types of actions by<br />plaintiffs that can inhibit this backfire effect, including cover-up, devaluation<br />of the defendant, reinterpretation and intimidation. To illustrate the value of<br />backfire analysis of defamation struggles, we examine four Australian<br />examples, involving author Avon Lovell, politician Robert Askin, solicitor<br />John Marsden and Aboriginal leader Geoff Clark, and the British example of<br />McDonald’s suit against two activists. Participants in these struggles see the<br />matters in terms of reputation and free speech; backfire analysis allows an<br />observer to put tactics used by participants in a coherent framework.</p>

Brabbling Women: Disorderly Speech and the Law in Early Virginia

Brabbling Women takes its title from a 1662 law enacted by Virginia's burgesses, which was intended to offer relief to the poore forced into defamation suits because their brabling wives had slandered or scandalized their neighbors. To quell such episodes of female misrule, lawmakers decreed that husbands could choose either to pay damages or to have their wives publicly ducked.But there was more at stake here. By examining women's use of language, Terri L. Snyder demonstrates how women resisted and challenged oppressive political, legal, and cultural practices in colonial Virginia. Contending that women's voices are heard most clearly during episodes of crisis, Snyder focuses on disorderly speech to illustrate women's complex relationships to law and authority in the seventeenth century.Ordinary women, Snyder finds, employed a variety of strategies to prevail in domestic crises over sexual coercion and adultery, conflicts over women's status as servants or slaves, and threats to women's authority as independent household governors. Some women entered the political forum, openly participating as rebels or loyalists; others sought legal redress for their complaints. Wives protested the confines of marriage; unfree women spoke against masters and servitude. By the force of their words, all strove to thwart political leaders and local officials, as well as the power of husbands, masters, and neighbors. The tactics colonial women used, and the successes they met, reflect the struggles for empowerment taking place in defiance of the inequalities of the colonial period.

Creating a New Tort for Wrongful Mispresentation of Character

Both defamation law and the tort of false light invasion of privacy have been widely criticized as confusing in theory and arbitrary in result. A significant source of dissatisfaction, this Article contends, is that the prevailing system fails to account adequately for the existence of genuinely close cases under both torts. Such cases inevitably arise under doctrines that, like defamation and false light, contain major elements of indeterminacy. Yet, defamation and false light rules are generally based on a winner-take-all approach that departs from modern notions of apportionment. This Article proposes a new tort, wrongful mispresentation of character, as a device to enable jurors in appropriate cases to register their sense that both parties in a defamation or false light suit have staked out substantial positions. Rather than supplanting existing causes of action, the wrongful mispresentation would offer an additional option to juries legitimately torn between compelling arguments for both the plaintiff and defendant. Moreover, by conferring legal status on this compromise, the tort might stimulate settlements along this line between parties who would otherwise contest their suit to the bitter end. Part I provides an overview of salient developments in defamation and false light doctrines, and of criticisms and reforms that have been advanced. Part II describes the nature of the proposed tort of wrongful mispresentation and the circumstances under which it would be available; in addition, this Part discusses arguments that might be raised for and against the proposal. Part III identifies several areas in which the difficulty of principled resolution is a recurring phenomenon, and analyzes how wrongful mispresentation might provide a useful outlet in each area.

Suits Make the Man: Masculinity in Two English Law Courts, c.1500

This article argues that masculinity must be considered historically as an aspect of identity, made by individual men for themselves through a dynamic between pressures from the interior (self-perceptions and assessments) and the exterior (social prescriptions). For premodern Europe, we can most easily retrieve the individual self through its social imprint: the social self. Records from the courts of the Church (defamation suits) and of Chancery (petitions) show us that, for fifteenth-century Englishmen, the concerns which constituted reputation fell, in varying proportions, on both sides of the highly porous boundary between public and private worlds. Livelihood, family dealings, household governance, and sexuality all might play a role, sometimes in unexpected ways. This was true also of the clergy, a socially important minority of men. Legal records show us how crucially language served to mediate the equilibrium between individual and society in producing meanings of masculinity.

Silencing John Doe: Defamation & Discourse in Cyberspace

John Doe has become a popular defamation defendant as corporations and their officers bring defamation suits for statements made about them in Internet discussion fora. These new suits are not even arguably about recovering money damages but instead are brought for symbolic reasons-some worthy, some not so worthy. If the only consequence of these suits were that Internet users were held accountable for their speech, the suits would be an unalloyed good. However, these suits threaten to suppress legitimate criticism along with intentional and reckless falsehoods, and existing First Amendment law doctrines are not responsive to the threat these suits pose to Internet discourse. Although the constitutional privilege for opinion holds promise as a solution to this problem, the Supreme Court's jurisprudence provides little assurance that the privilege can protect the robust, uninhibited, and wide-open nature of Internet discourse without giving Internet speakers free license to harm the reputation of Copyright © 2000 by Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky t Associate Professor of Law, University of Florida College of Law. I owe a debt of gratitude to numerous people who helped me throughout the process of writing this Article: Amy Mashburn, Elizabeth Lear, Howard Lidsky, Rick Matasar, Max Steams, Chris Slobogin, Chris Hansen, Ann Beeson, Megan Gray, and Rebecca Newton Clarke. Special thanks go to David A. Anderson and Ron Krotoszynski, Jr., for reading the draft quickly and making incisive comments at critical stages of its development and to my research assistant Robert Lancaster for his extraordinary dedication in the final stages of the process. My other research assistants, Christopher Vallandingham and Susan Wynn, also provided great research support. Finally, I would like to thank all of the lawyers and parties involved in the new Internet libel cases who were kind enough to share their stories and their documents with me. HeinOnline -49 Duke L.J. 855 1999-2000

Taking it Back in Cyberspace: State Retraction Statutes, Defamation Suits against Online Newspapers

Most state statutes do not encompass online publications, but court rulings will determine legal status unless state legislatures act.

The Legal, Ethical, and Managerial Implications of the Neutral Employment Reference Policy

The litigious environment surrounding employers today has caused them to be overly fearful of providing candid yet adverse employment references. Their attempts to minimize litigation risk created by the dismissal of a vindictive employee have clouded their judgment when asked to assist in the dissemination of employee information. This is alarmingly illustrated by the growing number of employers who have blindly adopted a neutral reference policy. Unfortunately, indiscriminate application of this policy will not necessarily preclude litigation, but, rather, foster it. It is imperative that employers carefully weigh the tangible and intangible costs of a reference defamation suit against their duty legally, ethically, and managerially to disclose vital information about a former employee.

The Defamation Trap in Employee References

Defamation occurs when one person knowingly and maliciously gives damaging, false statements about a second person to a third person. In some cases, giving a negative reference could open a manager to the threat of a defamation suit. Because of that threat, some managers are unwilling to offer substantive information about their former employees, rendering reference checks useless. Some courts and legislatures have offered limited immunity from defamation threats for reference-checking communications, but that protection can easily be lost through careless 18-24 comments or procedures. The chief defense against defamation is to present factual information and to label opinion as such.

The defamation trap in employee references

Delamation occurs when one person intentionally and falsely speaks ill about another. But where does that leave managers who are asked for references after dismissing employees under trying circumstances?

The defamation trap in employee references

Defamation occurs when one person knowingly and maliciously gives damaging, false statements about a second person to a third person. In some cases, giving a negative reference could open a manager to the threat of a defamation suit. Because of that threat, some managers are unwilling to offer substantive information about their former employees, rendering reference checks useless. Some courts and legislatures have offered limited immunity from defamation threats for reference-checking communications, but that protection can easily be lost through careless 18-24 comments or procedures. The chief defense against defamation is to present factual information and to label opinion as such.