The Virginia Defamation Law Blog
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 the jury) to determine whether a particular statement may support a defamation action. At the same time, however, statements alleged to be defamatory must be evaluated in context, along with all accompanying statements, and cannot be considered in isolation. (See Hyland v. Raytheon Tech. Servs. Co., 277 Va. 40, 48 (2009)). This is all black-letter defamation law, but courts have struggled with the question of how exactly to instruct a jury considering a defamation claim based on a statement that includes both statements of fact and expressions of opinion. Today we have a new opinion offering some guidance. (Full disclosure: my firm was involved in the case).
Handberg v. Goldberg involved a dispute between a Loudoun County resident and The Morgan Center, a provider of educational advocacy services. The Morgan Center (run by Dr. Felicia Goldberg) kept Mr. Handberg’s debit card on file and would seek authorization from him prior to charging it for various services. Billing disagreements arose and Handberg eventually sent an email to his son’s school informing them that Dr. Goldberg no longer represented his son and including various details about the parties’ billing dispute. Dr. Goldberg sued Mr. Handberg for defamation based on this email, identifying 11 specific statements she believed were defamatory. Among those 11 statements were these three: