Defamation is the oral or written communication of a false statement about another that unjustly harms their reputation, and usually constitutes a tort or a crime. In several countries, including South Korea and Sweden, communicating a true statement can also be considered defamation.
Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit public figures from recovering damages for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED), if the emotional distress was caused by a caricature, parody, or satire of the public figure that a reasonable person would not have interpreted as factual.
Hill v Church of Scientology of Toronto February 20, 1995- July 20, 1995. 2 S.C.R. 1130 was a libel case against the Church of Scientology, in which the Supreme Court of Canada interpreted Ontario's libel law in relation to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Actual malice in United States law is a legal requirement imposed upon public officials or public figures when they file suit for libel. Unlike other individuals who are less well-known to the general public, public officials and public figures are held to a higher standard for what they must prove before they may succeed in a defamation lawsuit.
New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the freedom of speech protections in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution restrict the ability of American public officials to sue for defamation. Specifically, it held that if a plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit is a public official or person running for public office, not only must he or she prove the normal elements of defamation—publication of a false defamatory statement to a third party—he or she must also prove that the statement was made with "actual malice", meaning that the defendant either knew the statement was false or recklessly disregarded whether or not it was true.
Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 (1974), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States established the standard of First Amendment protection against defamation claims brought by private individuals. The Court held that, so long as they do not impose liability without fault, states are free to establish their own standards of liability for defamatory statements made about private individuals. However, the Court also ruled that if the state standard is lower than actual malice, the standard applying to public figures, then only actual damages may be awarded.
Barrett v. Rosenthal, 40 Cal.4th 33 (2006), was a California Supreme Court case concerning online defamation. The case resolved a defamation claim brought by Stephen Barrett, Terry Polevoy, and attorney Christopher Grell against Ilena Rosenthal and several others. Barrett and others alleged that the defendants had republished libelous information about them on the internet. In a unanimous decision, the court held that Rosenthal was a "user of interactive computer services" and therefore immune from liability under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Malice is a legal term referring to a party's intention to do injury to another party. Malice is either expressed or implied. Malice is expressed when there is manifested a deliberate intention to unlawfully take away the life of a human being. Malice is implied when no considerable provocation appears, or when the circumstances attending the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart. Malice, in a legal sense, may be inferred from the evidence and imputed to the defendant, depending on the nature of the case.
Fair comment is a legal term for a common law defense in defamation cases. It is referred to as honest comment in some countries.
In law, false light is a tort concerning privacy that is similar to the tort of defamation. The privacy laws in the United States include a non-public person's right to protection from publicity which puts the person in a false light to the public. That right is balanced against the First Amendment right of free speech.
Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1 (1990), was a United States Supreme Court case that rejected the argument that a separate opinion privilege existed against libel. It was seen by legal commentators as the end of an era that began with New York Times Co. v. Sullivan and continued with Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., in which the court clarified and greatly expanded the range and scope of what could be said in the press without fear of litigation.
Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 388 U.S. 130 (1967), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States established the standard of First Amendment protection against defamation claims brought by private individuals.
Time, Inc. v. Firestone, 424 U.S. 448 (1976), was a U.S. Supreme Court case concerning defamation suits against public figures.
Westmoreland v. CBS was a $120 million libel suit brought in 1982 by former U.S. Army Chief of Staff General William Westmoreland against CBS, Inc. for broadcasting on its program CBS Reports a documentary entitled The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception. Westmoreland also sued the documentary's narrator, investigative reporter Mike Wallace; the producer, investigative journalist and best-selling author George Crile, and the former CIA analyst, Sam Adams, who originally broke the story on which the broadcast was based.
Modern libel and slander laws, as implemented in many Commonwealth nations as well as in the United States and in the Republic of Ireland, are originally descended from English defamation law. The history of defamation law in England is somewhat obscure; civil actions for damages seem to have been relatively frequent as far back as the reign of Edward I (1272–1307), though it is unknown whether any generally applicable criminal process was in place. The first fully reported case in which libel is affirmed generally to be punishable at common law was tried during the reign of James I (1603-1625). Scholars frequently attribute strict English defamation law to James I's outlawing of dueling. From that time, both the criminal and civil remedies have been found in full operation.
The origins of the United States' defamation laws pre-date the American Revolution; one influential case in 1734 involved John Peter Zenger and established precedent that "The Truth" is an absolute defense against charges of libel. Though the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect freedom of the press, for most of the history of the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court failed to use it to rule on libel cases. This left libel laws, based upon the traditional "Common Law" of defamation inherited from the English legal system, mixed across the states. The 1964 case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, however, radically changed the nature of libel law in the United States by establishing that public officials could win a suit for libel only when they could prove the media outlet in question knew either that the information was wholly and patently false or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not". Later Supreme Court cases barred strict liability for libel and forbid libel claims for statements that are so ridiculous as to be patently false. Recent cases have added precedent on defamation law and the Internet.
Carol Burnett v. National Enquirer, Inc., was a decision by the California Court of Appeals, which ruled that the "actual malice" required under California law for imposition of punitive damages is distinct from the "actual malice" required by New York Times v. Sullivan to be liable for defaming a "public figure" and that the National Enquirer is not a "newspaper" for the purposes of California libel law.
Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Association, Inc. v. Bresler, 398 U.S. 6 (1970), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that using the word "blackmail" in a newspaper article "was no more than rhetorical hyperbole" and that finding such usage as libel "would subvert the most fundamental meaning of a free press" guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The ruling also touched on the plaintiff's status as a public figure.
Goldwater v. Ginzburg was a 1969 United States court ruling on defamation.
Time, Inc. v. Hill, 385 U.S. 374 (1967), is a United States Supreme Court case involving issues of privacy in balance with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and principles of freedom of speech.
