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 have discussed on this blog before on several occasions, a literally true statement can give rise to a defamation claim if a reasonable listener would infer a defamatory message from the words (and images) used, even if the words themselves do not convey that defamatory meaning directly. If…
Last year I commented on Gilman v. Spitzer, a defamation case out of the Southern District of New York, in which the court dismissed the plaintiff’s defamation claim on the ground that the statements at issue could not be reasonably interpreted as being “of and concerning” the plaintiff. On September…