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Libel Suits OK Even If Libel Is Truthful
Defeat Globalism writes to tell us that many journalists, bloggers, and media law specialists are concerned about a new ruling by a US Court of Appeals in Boston. The new ruling is allowing a former Staples employee to sue the company for libel after an email was sent out informing other employees that he had been fired for violations of company procedures regarding expense reimbursements. "Staples has asked the full appeals court to reconsider the ruling, and 51 news organizations have filed a friend-of-the-court brief saying that the decision, if allowed to stand, 'will create a precedent that hinders the media's ability to rely on truthful publication to avoid defamation liability.' But Wendy Sibbison, the Greenfield appellate lawyer for the fired Staples employee, Alan S. Noonan, said the ruling applies only to lawsuits by private figures against private defendants, that is, defendants not involved in the news business, over purely private matters."
My non-legal, everyday-speech understanding of the term 'libel' is that it means 'a lie that harms someone's reputation'. Can someone with more legal sense give a more accurate definition?
It's hard to say. There may have been a lot of inter-office controversy and rumors surrounding the employee's termination and the company felt that for the sake of preventing drama, they needed to set the story straight. Or it may have just been a rash unethical decision by an HR rep. But either way, I don't see why it would be considered libel. I hope that Staples appeals the case.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
So, can I sue various politically-driven groups for libel, even if what they say about the group I'm in is true?
Perhaps he was a good performing salesmen but was taking too much from the company trough, and this was their warning to others?
You are making as if this was a private matter, like something someone does at home or a student's grades at school (also debateable), I just don't see it that way.
Understandable, but to play devil's advocate again:
Any HR department would have to mention the employee by name as part of the motions of taking internal action, but the e-mail was sent to 1500 employees!
I'm betting on the defendant using the "maybe not totally wrong, but very excessive and unprofessional" defense.
I think it will stick.
Terms of a person's firing are almost always non-public. A company as large as Staples can't publish to ALL it's employees that they fired Bob over $5.00 misappropriated on an expense report. That's malicious. It's appropriate to say we will (and have) terminated over expense reports being wrong without giving the offenders name.
I can't think of any company I've worked at that's attached names to memos like that. Even companies that actually call the cops on somebody don't typically inform the employees of the person's name, or particular details of the infraction beyond the company "rule book" for just this reason.
So say something true that puts a person in less than favorable light on your blog, and you get a libel suit?
Not necessarily. Under this Massachusetts law, you could be sued if you say something that's true and the sole purpose of saying it is to harm the other person. Revealing information about a politician because you believe it's important for the public to know that information, despite any potential harm to the subject, shouldn't be grounds for a lawsuit.
Personally, I like the general concept of the law (preventing an action that's sole purpose is to harm another person), but I know that there's no good way to implement such a concept. Saying something that's true but negative about a politician should never be subject to libel law, but I can see how this law would quickly get twisted away from its purpose.
Well, I'm glad that I followed my own suggestion, and reread the story of the Zenger case. It was weirder than I remembered, and perhaps more interesting than the current Staples thing, which is still in a bit of a fuzzy state.
It appears that in English law at least through 1735, truth was no defense whatsoever against a libel charge. Yup: completely irrelevant. That's exactly what the judge told the jury in Zenger. Once Zenger admitted to publishing the pamphlets in question, the judge told the jury that they had nothing to decide, and must return a verdict of "guilty."
Alexander Hamilton defended Zenger successfully, essentially by convincing the jury to nullify the law, a power that juries appear to possess through the present day, but which prosecutors and judges often seem to try to obscure.
I hope that someone can post more factual information regarding the history of this trial, and later libel law in the US. In particular:
1. I wonder whether the judge's instruction in the Zenger case constitutes what they call a "directed verdict," in which case the jury apparently defied the direction. Or was it just strong advice? Anyone know exactly how directed verdicts work? Does the jury have an opportunity to ignore the direction?
2. Can anyone clarify the subsequent English and US history of libel law? To what extent, and how, is truth established as a defense? Has the first amendment to the US constitution been deemed relevant?
3. Any further stuff on jury nullification?
Mike O'Donnell http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~odonnell/
I can't speak for the US, but in Australia to use the defense that an otherwise libelous statement is true it must also be shown to be in the public interest to disseminate. For example, if you have evidence to say that a public figure takes drugs, you could argue that it's important to bring to the attention of the general public. If you had evidence to say that a private citizen is a bastard, while true, it isn't clearly in the public interest and it could be held to be libelous.
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I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that they got this judgment right. Relevant Massachusetts law says libel is untruthful or malicious statements against a person's character. Staples made statements that, while truthful, may well have been malicious due to the scope and context of their presentation.
Now a judge or jury will hear arguments from both sides. Previously, a judge had simply heard Staples say (paraphrasing) "nothing in this widely distributed e-mail that defamed the plaintiff was factually untrue, so these charges must be dismissed." This disregarded the fact that the e-mail describing Noonan's firing for violation of company policies was itself a violation of company policy, that the subtext of the message implied he had willfully violated company policy for his own profit when he maintains the violations were done in a combination of good faith and company-wide SOP that defied the letter of the written and largely un-enforced official policy, and that the context and timing of the firing as well as the inclusion of his name in the e-mail might lead those who read it to believe that Staples felt he had broken the law.
Seems that both parties acted immorally. Noonan simply wants his day in court to prove that Staples also acted illegally. His case DOES deserve to be heard, and Massachusetts probably DOES need to reexamine this law.
I know what you did last summer. Just kidding, I don't work at the NSA.
exactly. Not only that, but at least in this instance it is just. Employers should be liable to suit if they trash former employees to their other staff or to future employers. Even on a pre-employment call the previous employer should not be saying anything other than whether employment happened, dates, and salary.
In fact, that has been the policy at every major company I've worked with. A company trashing an employee after the fact can literally destroy someone's life. The same is not likely true the other way around.
At one of my previous employers I was promoted twice and given 3 raises on top of that within two years. The month I was laid off I received a performance related bonus. This was a small business and the bosses wife was a ditz. After several extremely positive interviews I discovered a loud silence afterward and couldn't figured out what was going on.
Had my wife call posing as a prospective employer, the first thing she said, is "No he does not work here." My wife pressed to ask if I ever worked there and she said, "Oh yeah, he used to work here." Again, my wife pressed, and asked if they were happy with my work. She said, "Yeah, he was okay." Once more my wife pressed, "Oh, he was just okay?" "He was fine, we never had any trouble with him." Wifey, "Well what happened, did he quit?" "He just had a disagreement with the boss." Wifey, "Ahh, I see, did he have disagreements with the boss often?" "No, they just disagreed about one thing and he quit."
Of course, a real prospective employer would never have pulled those teeth. They probably wouldn't have gotten past "He doesn't work here" and just assumed I gave a false reference. If they had, they would have though my performance was poor simply because the woman at the desk was too dense to be tactful and give a good reference.