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Can You Be Sued for What You Write in a Letter

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  • 05-16-2014, 09:10 PM
    LawResearcherMissy
    Re: Over a Letter
    Quote:

    Let's hope he's not actually a lawyer that gives people real advice based on his misunderstanding of his Posner hornbook.
    He's somebody else's problem, now.

    The vast majority of y'all work really hard to provide factual information, which is greatly appreciated by the people who come to us for help. He...didn't.
  • 05-17-2014, 03:13 AM
    Bubba Jimmy
    Re: Over a Letter
    At least I try to shut up when somebody shows me where I'm wrong, even if I can't admit it (which I try to do unless I remain unconvinced). ;-)
  • 05-17-2014, 05:53 AM
    Mr. Knowitall
    Re: Over a Letter
    Let's go back a bit. There is ample authority that if I defame a person, the fact that I publish the defamation to that person's agent or employee does not mean that the communication is not published. Welfarelvr cited Brown v. Elm City Lumber Co., 167 N.C. 9, 82 S.E. 961 (1914), which involved the determination of whether a communication directed to the plaintiff's attorney could support a defamation claim. In that case the court determined that it could not: the court found that the allegedly defamatory letter was a legitimate answer to an inquiry or claim from the plaintiff's attorney, that more latitude" is allowed in the response to an inquiry by the plaintiff's agent, thus finding that the letter was covered by qualified privilege despite having been "published" to the lawyer. Another example is where a plaintiff asks somebody to make an inquiry (e.g., to a former employee) and then attempts to sue over the reply. There is a lot of case law indicating that if you invite the statement, even through a third party agent to whom it is ostensibly published, you cannot sustain a defamation action over the statement you invited -- even if the same statement would be actionable if obtained by an independent third party, such as an actual prospective employer. Similarly, if an employee brings a union rep to a disciplinary hearing, the employee cannot sustain a defamation action by claiming that the allegations underlying the disciplinary action were published to the union rep.

    There is also ample case law involving corporations in which claims of publication within a corporation were held to fail due to the nature of and need for the communication within an organization. A supervisor can talk to the department manager about employee conduct without being deemed to have "published" that information to the manager. In other areas of law there is ample case law establishing how, within certain parameters, an employee cannot be distinguished from a corporation. For example, if an employee is fired based upon a report or recommendation of her supervisor, she cannot sustain an action for tortious interference with contract against the supervisor because an employee acting within the scope of employment is not a third party to a contract between the employer and another person.

    I gave the old college try to trying to find a case where a corporation claimed that its own employee was a "third party" for purposes of publication, in relation to a defamation action brought by the corporation, but I came up empty. I wasn't surprised that I didn't find a case. If you extrapolate the case law addressing defamatory statements about an individual, made to their agent or employee, to corporations, you're placing the corporation in the extraordinary position in which it can claim that any allegedly defamatory statement about it is published as every person within the corporation would be a "third person". Such a theory would also undermine the corporation's historic defense to defamation claims arising from internal discussions, that the parties to the discussion could not be deemed "third persons" due to the nature of corporations and the need for internal communication.

    If anybody can actually come up with a case in which a business claimed that defamatory statements about it were published to a third person, with that third person being the employee assigned to receive and review incoming mail or phone calls, I would love to read it.
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