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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?
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.
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.