Court Rejects Suit By Woman Who Was Navy Pilot

"Charles Talleyrand" wrote in message

American law on slandering public figure is rather strange. You must
prove

1) What you said was false
2) Those comments demeaned the target.
3) The comments were *intended* to hurt the target.

Not quite!g

There's two kinds of defamation, libel and slander. Libel is written (and
now also covers the electronic media) while slander is oral. In either
case, for a plaintiff to recover they must prove that the defendant made
false statements that damaged the plaintiff's reputation by holding them up
to ridicule, shame, contempt, disgrace, etc. Truth is an absolute defense
to a charge of libel or slander.

The defendant is liable even if they, in good faith, believed the statements
to be true.

The plaintiff may plead and prove actual damages and may also claim punative
damages. The amount of actual damages are dependant upon the harm actually
suffered. Punative damages are designed to punish a defendant and may
greatly exceed the actual harm inflicted.

If the plaintiff is a public figure, then they must prove, in addition to
the above, that the defendant knew the charges were false or acted with a
willful, wanton, and reckless disregard for their truth.

In slandering a public figure, being wrong and hurting someone is just not
enough. The target must prove you intended to cause her emotional pain.
Most slander lawsuits die here. The defense of "we made a mistake" and
"we were sloppy" works.

There is no requirement that the defendant want to hurt someone (although
pretty common), only that they made false statements. If a public figure is
involved, the "we screwed up" defense might work, but it might not. It will
depend on the facts of the case.

I have not followed the case, so I don't know all the facts. The forgoing
is a VERY general statement of the law. When public figures and
institutional defendants are concerned there can be some significant
variations.

Bill Kambic

Memeber, State Bar of Texas (Retired)

If, by any act, error, or omission, I have, intentionally or
unintentionally, displayed any breedist, disciplinist, sexist, racist,
culturalist, nationalist, regionalist, localist, ageist, lookist, ableist,
sizeist, speciesist, intellectualist, socioeconomicist, ethnocentrist,
phallocentrist, heteropatriarchalist, or other violation of the rules of
political correctness, known or unknown, I am not sorry and I encourage you
to get over it.