To be actionable in Virginia, defamatory statements must be about the person who is filing the lawsuit. A plaintiff can’t successfully bring a defamation action based on a false statement that doesn’t expressly or impliedly refer to him or her, and in a manner clear enough to communicate that reference…
As I wrote on this blog last month, if a trial judge gives the jury faulty instructions in a defamation case regarding liability issues, the parties are entitled to a new trial. Juries are there to weigh evidence and determine the facts, not decide what the law should be. Today,…
Statements of pure opinion are protected by the First Amendment and are not actionable as defamation. Whether an alleged defamatory statement is one of fact or opinion is a question of law to be decided by the court, not the jury. It is also for the trial judge (and not…
In Virginia, some statements enjoy absolute immunity from defamation claims. Such statements are said to be protected by an absolute privilege. The most common of the absolute privileges is the so-called “judicial privilege,” which protects statements made in connection with and relevant to a judicial proceeding. The doctrine is typically…
For a statement to be actionable as defamation per quod, it must have resulted in damages to the plaintiff. (See Landmark Communications, Inc. v. Macione, 230 Va. 137 (1985)). In actions for libel and slander in Virginia, a plaintiff must prove the quantum of his damages unless the words at…
The Virginia Supreme Court has had enough of defamation verdicts based on subjective statements that are relative in nature and depend largely on the speaker’s viewpoint. Such statements are statements of opinion, not fact, and cannot support a defamation verdict. A few years ago, the Court made it very clear…
Defamatory statements falling into certain categories deemed particularly damaging to one’s reputation are considered defamatory “per se” and may be compensable even without proof of reputational harm. False accusations of morally reprehensible criminal activity are a common example of this “per se” form of defamation. As the Virginia Supreme Court…
Whether a particular tort is deemed intentional, as opposed to merely negligent, can have far-reaching implications. Intentional torts and negligent torts are treated very differently when it comes to things like insurance coverage, sovereign immunity, and recoverable damages. Defamation is one of those torts that cannot be easily categorized, as…
When California congressman Devin Nunes, a public figure, decided to file a pair of defamation lawsuits against Twitter (based in California), The McClatchy Company (based in California), and others, why do you suppose he selected Virginia as his forum of choice? One popular theory is that Virginia’s anti-SLAPP laws are…
Another federal judge faced with interpreting Virginia’s insulting-words statute has found that (1) a face-to-face confrontation is not required, and (2) if the words at issue are defamatory per se, then they automatically satisfy the requirements of the statute. The case is Christen Waddle v. Aundrea Claughton, currently pending in…